December 17, 2005 to December 18, 2005
Parental Obligations
Parental Responsibility for Children--Posner's Response to Comments
I regret having failed to respond to comments on my last week's posting, on truancy. I recognize the irony; I have been truant. Let me belatedly respond to two particularly important comments.
The first is that the "carrot" approach, as in the Progresa program that Becker mentions, may work much better in underdeveloped countries, for example countries in which many girls are kept out of school by their parents. To take an extreme example, if 50 percent of children are truant, then paying all parents to send their kids to school will have a chance of affecting the attendance of half the children; if only 1 percent are truant, then 99 percent of parents receive a payment that will not affect their behavior because their children are not truant.
Second, a point as important as it is obvious, getting kids into school will confer few if any social benefits unless schooling improves their life prospects, particularly their employment prospects. If there are no jobs for them when they get out, the only effect of giving them schooling may be to radicalize them. It is thus ironic that the French have a program for forcing kids into school, since the job opportunities for graduates are so limited by the country's employment laws.
Response on Parental Obligations-BECKER
I am adding responses to comments on my postings on both parental responsibility and obesity. I apologize that I do not always do this, but my only excuse is time pressure.
I do not know about the Australian system, but it sounds interesting. Australia has been a pioneer in student loans and other ways, so I am not completely surprised to learn that they have been active in providing parental incentives to improve education.
I do believe that parents are mainly responsible to raise their children, but that is why I am willing to offer parents incentives to give their children better opportunities. Pressure can be placed on parents to induce their children to behave better. My view is that poor parents love their children as much as rich ones, but poverty leads to behavior that is disadvantageous to the children's future. Progresa and similar programs try to offset that.
The fact is that Progresa has "worked" at least in the sense of leading to longer school attendance and better grades at school.
Should parents be punished for children's behavior? Absolutely in my judgment since they are ones who can have the greatest influence affecting their behavior. If parents bring children into the world, why does that not carry with it parental responsibility for various forms of their children's behavior?