They likely have an implicit assumption that transfers to poor families are too low relative to the socially determined minimum income – that or they’re just saying things that they think will win them votes.

Nothing is binary, but defining extremes helps us to understand influences – there is no point talking about interrelationships when we don’t understand the primatives of what is going on. The entire “vacuum” concept is a vacuous point, often used to try and ignore logical arguments that people don’t want to listen to – so I’d avoid using it.

Say we assumed that the “responsibilty” for a childs welfare is solely due to parents, and that society has no responsibility. In that case, if the benefits of scale etc were sufficient, parents would work together to provide said provision of food – the fact they don’t implies that either this is inefficient on that level, that the transaction costs of parents working together are high, or that there is a free rider problem.

In this context, “free food in school” is likely to be a fairly poor policy (unless we can frame it as a co-ordination problem, I like that explanation).

The externalities you are willing to discuss are returns on investment for the child, you need to support why we view such things as socially desirable in order to justify government intervention. If we think that, in many situations, the benefit to the child is underplayed in the family setting we can justify it.

I’m not disagreeing with anything your saying, but we need to look at it consistently, and with the question of “what society values” – we can’t justify an intervention without trying to work out what assumptions we are truly making. An assumption that “a society/community bears some responsibility for the raising of a child” is likely to be an important part of this – and we have to ask whether that is the way NZer’s feel. I do – which is why I said I agree with it, but I am not all NZer’s, only one.

Oh, if you set the whole thing up so total benefit payments are constant, then I strongly support it: it’s mandating a transfer within benefit to the benefit of the kids at the expense of the parents. I didn’t think that’s quite what Labour was proposing though.

I wish!

“elasticity of childbearing”. is there any data on this?

It’s not a binary event. Clearly the responsibility for raising a child resides with the parents. However, we do not live in a vacuum (or theoretical economic model!) but within an interconnected system. For many reasons (primarily poverty, welfare dependency), child rearing, for many, is not a successful process. If a policy, such as the provision of food in schools, can be provided at scale, that can have up upward and downward influences i.e the children have better nutrition, which may flow on to better performance at school in both behaviour and learning (both interrelated) and this can flow back into the home through increased levels of awareness, possible interaction with the schools and so on. In other words, the children end up educating the parents. If this circular flow can work, then everyone’s a winner. Now, at the same time, we can look at policies for help new parents prepare for success. The pay off for society comes downstream. Policy doesn’t have to be one or the other but can be both/and.

Indeed. However, if we are feeding the kids at school then when we work out the “income basket” required for a family for an appropriate minimum income this must be taken into account – given that is already an income transfer, the required other income transfer will be smaller right.

I would agree with you entirely, except for the dynamics. What is the elasticity of childbearing in the worst quality families with respect to payment for having kids?

I was waiting for that 😉

I’m saying there is a continuum – we don’t ask all parents to home school their children, maybe there is an argument for outsourcing lunches as well 😛