Feed all my children? On my wife’s income from my mother’s poverty pay business, I can afford to pay school fees as well. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Thanks to JR for alerting me to this.

From the Spectator, yesterday:

A Norstat poll for The Sunday Times revealed that 34 per cent of Labour voters in Scotland oppose John Swinney’s move to abolish the two-child cap, while only 31 per cent support its reversal. Despite the Scottish Greens blasting the Conservative policy as ‘morally bankrupt’, the party’s voters were the biggest proponents of the policy with only a quarter of the eco-activists keen to see it repealed.

From the London School of Economics in September 2023:

The policy’s logic seems to be this: families should only have a third or subsequent child if they can afford to do so without state support. If they go ahead, they should increase their employment income to meet the cost, rather than expect the taxpayer to contribute.

What the researchers actually found but which, of course, the media did not tell Labour voters:

1. The two-child limit has had minimal impact on the birth rate. In part this is because of a lack of knowledge about the policy, which could change as time goes on. But there are a number of other reasons. For many families we interviewed, times were good when they had their additional child, so the level of benefits that would be available in a time of need was simply not part of the equation. 
2. Second, we find no impact at all on employment rates, or on work hours (two-thirds of affected families are already doing some paid work). 
3. In sum, the two-child limit has had limited or no effects on the government’s stated objectives for the policy. What it has meant, instead, is sharp increases in poverty and hardship – because the level of support available to families that fall on hard times is explicitly designed to be inadequate.

Source: The two-child limit: a growing hole in the UK’s safety net