Philosophy & Public Affairs 50 (2022), 4

All welfare states distribute many of the costs of children across society at large to different degrees. Policies such as publicly funded parental leave, free or subsidized child-care, and child benefits, distribute some of the costs of raising children between parents and non-parents. Welfare states also distribute among all citizens the costs of added adult members, i.e., the costs of funding the welfare claims children will make once they are adults, e.g., health care and unemployment benefits and pension costs; they do this insofar as the tax revenues that fund these claims are paid by all citizens whose tax liability is not greater if and because they are parents. Call this type of arrangement, Standard Unified Welfare (or Standard Welfare for short).