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The Housewife: An Unjustified Financial Burden on the Community*

   Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009
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   corresponds to an out-of-date concept of marriage and has no
   justification from either the economic or the social standpoint. A
   housewife receives an income from her marriage and, if she actually
   does the housework, she improves the couple's standard of living. A
   number of working hypotheses are put forward in an attempt to see how
   the housewife could assume the normal responsibilities of a taxpayer
   and social security contributor.

   It is impossible (a) to assess the value of the services provided by
   the housewife in her sheltered environment and (b) even to know for
   certain what she really does there (many housewives employ charwomen or
   au pair girls or even full-time servants). However, when it is a
   question of granting to a widow an income related to what she had when
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   this principle is valid with respect to benefits, it ought also to be
   valid with respect to obligations. Thus, the main proposal made here is
   that the housewife should pay income tax and social security
   contributions on a fictitious amount equivalent to half of her
   husband's earnings; this amount would be treated as ‘earned income’,
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   contributions on the whole of his own earned income, as he would if he
   employed a housekeeper. The above-mentioned fictitious amount would
   also serve as the basis of calculation of the housewife's entitlement
   to social security benefits, subject to redistribution so as to assure
   a minimum subsistence in case of need. Reforms along these lines could
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   ^1 In a few cases, a widow may also enjoy some minor advantages, but
   these cannot be compared with the privileges enjoyed by a housewife.
   2

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   20

   ^20 See ‘The New Housewife Blues’, Time, 14 March 1977, p. 46.Google
   Scholar
   21
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   paid by women without corresponding benefits; and the extra cost to
   health insurance funds due to the fact that women (including
   housewives) in certain age groups consult their doctors more often than
   men, and so on.
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   30

   ^30 Housewives and the Economy, Supplement to World Young Women's
   Christian Association, Women and the Economy, Geneva, 1976, p. 3.Google
   Scholar
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   ^32 The proposal could be construed as establishing an automatic
   correspondence between a housewife, on the one hand, and the cost of
   looking after children in the absence of the parents, on the other
   hand; it is based on the above-mentioned confusion arising from the
   attempt to justify the privileges granted to a housewife on the ground
   of the existence of children.
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   ^33 More or less everybody would receive it, except the housewife, who
   would not be entitled to it since she would not be employed outside the
   home. But she would become entitled to it on reaching the normal age of
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   Cuvillier, Rolande 1993. Equality of Treatment for Housewives in Tax
   and Benefit Systems: A Proposal. Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 22,
   Issue. 4, p. 439.
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   The Housewife: An Unjustified Financial Burden on the Community*
     * Volume 8, Issue 1
     * Rolande Cuvillier
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   The Housewife: An Unjustified Financial Burden on the Community*
     * Volume 8, Issue 1
     * Rolande Cuvillier