French family policy: long tradition and diversified measures

Abstract

In France, the intervention of the state in the private sphere has long been accepted as legitimate. The current French family policy is the result of a compromise between the objectives of raising fertility, providing income support to families and promoting the work-family balance. Thus it includes a wide range of measures based on a variety of ideological standpoints. It combines measures encouraging women's employment with others in favour of large families. Recently, employers have been encouraged to implement family-friendly policies of their own. Since the state family policy is already quite comprehensive, their participation is rather low. This long-term `mix of tools' is likely to be a factor behind the current high fertility in France, but the number and the complexity of family policy measures make it very difficult to quantify their overall effect on fertility.