Money invested into family planning is a form of stimulus for the economy. In economics it’s clear, a dollar spent on family planning and a dollar spent on infrastructure achieves the same thing in creating jobs and putting money back into the economy. In addition to this, in a time when people are losing jobs and unemployment is rising, having more children and adding another mouth to feed may not be the best choice.
The Idea that only an investment in infrastructure is the solution to the economy is ludicrous. Infrastructure alone only adds jobs to one sector of the workforce, which admittedly has been depleted by the outsourcing of many blue-collar jobs oversees. But other sectors of the American workforce are suffering as well. There are not enough infrastructure projects that have long-term economic stimulus to justify hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money being spent solely on this form of stimulus. You can only pave so many roads before the economic cost of paving these roads exceeds the benefits of having them paved in the first place.
While family planning is being ridiculed, it does serve as a long-term economic stimulus. The cost spent on condoms and family planning education could save an unemployed couple with two children the expense of having a third one in a time where money is tight and unemployment is rising. In addition, it could save the government and taxpayer’s money on Medicare for the cost of delivering, treating, and vaccinating a child, as well as the family when the crisis is over and there is more money to go around. Instead of the family now having to pay for the cost of another child, they can go out and invest in their current family, buy more goods, go on vacations, and even send both their children to college. The last one is the most beneficial part of the long-term investment, especially if with three children, the family could have only sent one child to college. This is stimulus in two ways, first the obvious way; the children that receive college degrees will get better paying jobs in the skilled labor sector, and therefore have more disposable income to spend, increasing the multiplier effect. The second, but not so evident stimulus is that instead of adding two people to the unskilled workforce, you add zero. This is important because what leads to unemployment is the discrepancy between the supply of unskilled labor and the demand of unskilled labor caused by, the economically inefficient but socially needed, minimum wage price floor. Now if you picture the first scenario on a larger scaled basis, this could drastically decrease the supply of unskilled labor, lowering the amount of unemployment and even raising the minimum wage, inflation adjusted, from what it is now. This stimulates the economy by saving the government money on unemployment benefits and other social programs that are directly affected by high unemployment and low wages. Unlike paving roads, family planning has more of a stimulus effect on the economy.
