KEY POINTS:
Getting more mothers into paid work is a key to paying for our growing numbers of old people, according to a keynote speaker at a Government-sponsored social policy conference.
Professor Joakim Palme, director of Sweden's Institute of Futures Studies and son of assassinated Prime Minister Olof Palme, told
the Wellington conference that the welfare state would survive the ageing of society and globalisation only if it encouraged more people - especially mothers - to become taxpayers.
"We have this new trend of women doing well in education, and we have a need to increase the tax base for the welfare system," he said.
"Sometimes the costs of Scandinavian welfare states are exaggerated - Denmark is not spending more than the United Kingdom, and Sweden is not spending more than France or Germany, because we have a larger proportion of the population that are taxpayers."
Sweden has the world's second-highest labour force participation rate by women aged 15 to 64 at around 77 per cent, compared with 70 per cent in New Zealand.
The gap between it and New Zealand is most marked among mothers with children under 6.
In Sweden, 75 per cent are in paid work; in New Zealand just under 50 per cent.
Sole parents are even more likely to be in paid work in Sweden (87 per cent) compared with New Zealand (49 per cent).
Dr Palme said most Swedish mothers went back to work and put their children into day care when the children were about 1 or 1 1/2.
"Some wait until 2, some even longer, but that's very unusual," he said.
The state actively encouraged mothers back to work through paid parental leave of 15 months, of which at least two months must be taken by the father, and through massively subsidised childcare, limited to a maximum fee of 1000 Swedish kroner ($200) a month.
"It's a guarantee - municipalities have to provide families with children with childcare from the age of 18 months," Dr Palme said.
He said the Scandinavian countries combined high economic growth with high equality by encouraging everyone to work, using active assistance to help people move to new jobs after any employer closed down.
They paid benefits such as pensions universally, and paid sickness and unemployment benefits on an income-related basis, giving people an extra incentive to get higher-paid jobs.
They also invested heavily in education from the age of 1 to life-long adult education to give people the skills to move into new jobs, Dr Palme said.
"We need to put children and youth first.
"We should look at the countries that perform best in education, such as Finland.
"A Danish sociologist has looked at the effect of social class on educational outcomes and found that the impact of the father's social class disappears for the youngest children with the expansion of early childhood education and reduced child poverty."
WORKING MUMS
With children under six
NZ
Working mums 50%
Sole parents working 49%
Sweden
Working mums 75%
Sole parents working 87%