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NZCPR
Guest Forum
Stuart
Birks
Director
of the Centre for Public Policy Evaluation, Massey University.
2 December 06
Thinking
of the Future
Central
to the issue of policy making is the fact that we do not
influence the present, but we may influence the future. When
determining policy objectives it is important, therefore, to
consider not so much what is wrong now, but what may be
unsatisfactory in the future. A focus on present circumstances
may result in poor decisions. Even left alone, things will
change over time. Hence, to give an economic example, it could
be wrong to clamp down on inflation when an economy is already
heading into a downturn. As inflation is already set to fall,
the policy might deepen the downturn, giving a deeper trough,
or a “hard landing” rather than a “soft landing”.
We
are living in a period of major changes in education and
employment patterns, in the age and gender distribution of our
population and in policy on families. This offers much food
for thought. Are we focusing on foreseeable future issues, or
is attention too heavily concentrated on current indicators?
Each
new generation has its own view of the world, and this shapes
the perspectives taken and issues that receive attention.
Hence those who lived through the depression years of the
1930s might have tended to be frugal, whereas those growing up
in the years after World War II experienced and expected
continued prosperity and full employment. It may also be that
each generation is caught by surprise as different events
unfold. Will today’s young people be caught by surprise? Can
we anticipate what their issues will be?
Foretelling
the future is a dangerous task, and there are many examples of
predictions that were way off the mark. Some areas are
relatively safe, however. We have a reasonable idea how many
70-year-olds we will have in twenty years’ time, as most of
them will be here as 50-year-olds now. Similarly, the
teachers, doctors and builders of the future are being trained
now.
I
came across some interesting data recently in “Optometrist
and Dispensing Optician Workforce — Summary Results from the
2005 Workforce Annual Survey”,
http://www.nzhis.govt.nz/publications/opto04.pdf.
They showed active optometrists in 2004 by age and sex, as in
the following graph
While
the overall data show something rapidly approaching gender
balance, men dominate in the older age groups and women in the
younger ones. If we roll this forward 20 years, rather than
gender balance, we will have a predominantly female workforce.
Those who are looking at data overall may be pleased with the
current situation, but if we break this down by age cohort, it
would appear that apparent gender equality overall is being
achieved through high levels of inequality for the younger age
groups. If gender inequality is considered a problem to be
overcome, as has been strongly promoted in policy circles,
shouldn’t we be concerned that we may simply be reversing
the problem rather than eliminating it?
We
can already see signs of a reversed imbalance. For example,
women now significantly outnumber men in tertiary enrolments,
and men’s proportion of the school teaching workforce has
shrunk markedly over the past thirty or so years, along with
their virtual elimination from the early childhood sector.
Even in population numbers, there are some younger cohorts
where women outnumber men to an extent similar to that after
the First World War. What are the men doing, and where are
they going? What effect will the imbalance have for those age
groups in ten, twenty or thirty years? Are there issues here
that merit attention?
People
also react to their environment. There is more scope to change
in the longer run. What will be the long-term effects of
changes in family structure and policy, currently high rates
of relationship breakdown, and the heavy involvement of the
law in these cases and those of ex-nuptial births?
I
recall growing up in England with the expectation, in my
social circles at least, that a man would put all his assets
into his marriage, whereas it would be accepted and possibly
encouraged for a woman with some means of her own to keep
those separate. This reflected their different
specialisations, the possibility, however slim at that time,
of marriage breakdown, and prevailing matrimonial property
law. The law has changed markedly since then, and relationship
breakdown is highly likely. The attitude of Sir Paul McCartney
in not protecting his assets with a pre-nuptial agreement,
while understandable for one of his generation, might seem naïve
and foolhardy among today’s twenty-year-olds.
As
people gain greater experience of the Property Relationships
Act and the real implications of the Child Support Act, for
example, how will their behaviour and their life choices
change? To what extent will young people specialise and make a
commitment to their relationships? Will they consider it worth
while building up their earning power if there may be limited
benefit to them from this? What environment will they create
for their children? As may be the experience of every
generation, they may try hard to avoid the mistakes of the
generation before them, but they also inherit the legal and
institutional structures set up by and for that previous
generation. Will they follow their parents, with high rates of
relationship breakdown, or will they react against this?
Instead of seeing an unsatisfactory marriage as an
unfulfilling trap from which to escape, might they focus on
avoiding what they have observed, namely the financial and
emotional costs of relationship breakdown? Will they simply
avoid relationships altogether so as not to be risk the legal
interventions in their lives?
We
are not currently in a sustainable situation. Future family
circumstances for many of today’s young people will not
match those of today’s 40- and 50-year-olds. While
yesterday’s children of separated parents may still have had
grandparents in their lives, to what extent will this carry
over to their children? How many still have close
relationships with both parents, and how many of those parents
are in a position to play a grandparenting roll? Particularly
vulnerable relationships for those children would include
those with their fathers and their fathers’ families.
People
are reacting differently as a result of both changed attitudes
and the changed legal environment. Has any analysis been done
on the effects of the legal changes? If so, I have not seen
it. If anything, the political argument in favour of the
changes focused on selective aspects of individual rights,
while ignoring many broader social implications.
The
seeds of many potential future problems can be observed now.
Many relationships have already broken down. Others are in the
process of doing so. Gender imbalances in education can be
seen within the school system. Today’s workplace imbalances
among younger people may well feed through to imbalances in
senior positions in twenty years. Should we be concerned?
Perhaps
we could draw a parallel with another area where the future
figures prominently, namely that of global warming. It is
commonly argued that we should act now to limit future
environmental problems. Are there not enough signs of possible
future social problems to merit a rethink of current policies
in those areas?
Stuart Birks
is the director of the Centre for Public Policy Evaluation at Massey University, Palmerston North. He is an economist with a focus on policy formulation and implementation.
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