ABSTRACT
The economic organization in modern industrial society is unable consistently to support man under all conditions. It leaves a number of vacuums in periods of stress, such as unemployment and illness. The individual is often not able to bridge these periods of vanishing incomes and/or extraordinary expenditures, even assuming a maximum of ambition and foresight on his own part. There is, furthermore, a limit to the foresight and savings which can reasonably be demanded of an ordinary man when income is low and consumption perhaps lower than the hygienic and cultural standards demand. Finally there are definite economic advantages in socializing those risks. With this general motivation a system of social security has been erected in Sweden as in other countries. The point to be emphasized here is that practically all measures of family security directed toward relieving the differential costs of children would not be effective if the economic order were left free to ruin people as before. A population and family policy demands as its very basis general social security. This is true in an objective and technical sense, as every expert will agree. It is even more true politically and psychologically. Indeed, a population program would never succeed politically if it had to force through on its own such an enormous change in the whole economic system as is implied in letting all carry some ultimate responsibility for all.
