ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates whether the couples accounts reveal any perverse consequences of individualism and the prioritization of family. It looks at effects of their decisions, particularly in terms of gender and intergenerational relations. In the 1980s, critics of social democracy mounted a fierce attack on collectivist social policies that focused on how to divide up the economic cake rather than on how to enlarge it. Trade unions pursuing their collective interests limited resources for investment; high tax rates for redistribution blocked entrepreneurial initiative; the cushion of social protection dulled ambition and effort; worst of all, collective benefits and services rewarded idleness and improvidence in the name of “social need”. The British government claimed that its economic policies in the 1980s led to faster growth, at least for the second half of the decade. But this growth did not increase the supply of certain key economic assets Employ-ment expanded, but the number of secure, well paid, full-time jobs contracted.
