Hosts:
Marius R. Busemeyer – Professor of Comparative Political Economy at the University of Konstanz and Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”.
Gabriele Spilker – Professor of International Politics at the University of Konstanz and Co-Speaker of the Cluster.

Guest:
Pieter Vanhuysse – Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at the University of Southern Denmark and affiliated with the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies. His research connects political science, economics, sociology, and political demography.

Episode Overview
What does demography have to do with inequality? In this episode, Marius R. Busemeyer and Gabriele Spilker speak with Pieter Vanhuysse about welfare states, intergenerational transfers, and inequalities between parents and non-parents.

Vanhuysse argues that welfare states are not only “Robin Hood” institutions redistributing between rich and poor. To a larger extent, they function as “piggy banks”: systems that redistribute resources across the life course. The episode explores why raising children creates public benefits for society, while many costs remain private.

Episode Highlights

Welfare States as Piggy Banks

· Across 22 European countries, most net welfare-state benefits are explained by age and life-cycle dynamics rather than class redistribution.

· Working-age people finance pensions, healthcare, long-term care, education, and family policies.

· Upward transfers are largely socialized; downward transfers to children remain more privatized.

Children, Care, and Public Goods

· Children become future workers, taxpayers, carers, and parents — making them a public good, not just a private choice.

· Raising children requires public support, private money transfers, and unpaid time transfers.

· Unpaid care and household work are often the largest, but least visible, parental contribution.

Parents and Non-Parents

· Looking only at taxes and benefits, parents appear to contribute less than non-parents.

· Once private money and time transfers are included, the picture reverses: parents contribute more than two and a half times as much.

· Vanhuysse describes this as an invisible “metaphorical tax on parenthood”.

Fertility, Family Policy, and Crisis

· Even family-friendly Nordic welfare states are experiencing declining fertility rates.

· Young adults face uncertainty, housing pressure, climate anxiety, war, digitalization, and economic insecurity.

· Marginal reforms may not match the scale of the challenge.

Policy Implications

· Supporting parents requires looking beyond classical family policy.

· Societies need to value reproduction and care work alongside production and paid employment.

· Welfare states must better recognize time, care, and generational responsibility.

Links & Further Reading

More about the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”: www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/inequality

Further readings:

o Vanhuysse, P. (2024): Debunking The ‘Stork Theory’: Why Do Low-Fertility Societies Tax Their Own Reproduction?Institute for Family Studies, Octobre 8, 2024. 

o Vanhuysse, P. (2024): The New Nordic Paradox: How Family-Friendly Welfare States Burden Parents The Most.Institute for Family Studies, Octobre 23, 2024.

o Vanhuysse, P., Medgyesi, M., Gál, R.(2023): Taxing reproduction: the full transfer cost of rearing children. in Europe. R Soc Open Sci. 1 October 2023; 10 (10): 230759.

o Vanhuysse P., Medgyesi M., Gal R. I. (2021): Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines: Decomposing the roles of age and socio-economic status shows that European tax-and-benefit systems primarily redistribute across age groups. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0255760. 

Contact: [email protected]

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