Family Policy in Germany

The family policy of the past ten years has been influenced mainly by three (discourse) events: (1) by the discussion of demographic change and the continuing low birth rate of 1.4 children per woman on average, (2) by the debate on the link between educational success and social origin, particularly under the impression of the negative results for Germany compared to other OECD countries in the PISA studies, and (3) by the challenges of increasing paid occupation among women and the insufficient compatibility of work and family life, which were communicated in the political sphere not least by EU targets as part of the Lisbon strategy.

Family policy in Germany has therefore advanced from a “niche subject” to an important policy field. In alignment with the “family policy triad” (BMFSFJ 2006) consisting of monetary benefits, infrastructure measures and time policy, various measures have been taken since 2005, whereby the first two fields (money + infrastructure) form the focus of the present article.

The traditionally high financial and tax-related benefits used in family policy (regulated via federal laws) have been modernized in part (e.g. child benefit, parental benefit), yet also continue the classic direction of the federal German model (e.g. income splitting for tax purposes for married couples, contribution-free insurance for marriage partners, double system of child benefit and tax allowance for children). Particularly the inability to tackle child poverty effectively and the strong focus on marriage in German federal family policy remain largely untouched.

With regard to infrastructure measures (competencies on the state level, implementation by local authorities), since 2005 the act for the expansion of daycare and the child support act on the federal level have introduced the expansion of public childcare for children under three in particular, thus launching further-reaching steps towards early-childhood education and improved compatibility of working and family life. Here too, however, alongside questions of social selectivity in the field of early-childhood education and quality assurance for care outside the home, the objective must be to link paid employment with needs and necessities for care work for women and men, and to ensure high quality care.

At least three weak points in the construction of German federal family policy are responsible for these desiderata: firstly, the conflict of competencies within the federalist structures, between the federal, state and local authority levels; secondly, the lack of coordination between family policy and other policy fields such as labour market, education and equality policy; and thirdly, the historically caused insufficient tackling of social inequalities in German family policy.