6 - Retrenchment and reform, 1939–1947

Summary

Developments in family allowances and social insurance during the Second World War virtually assured massive welfare reforms after the liberation in 1945. Strife between different kinds of industrial and commercial employers over the burden of family allowances continued to attract the attention of state officials until the final days of the Third Republic. As we saw in the previous chapter, employers whose workers had relatively few children increasingly grouped themselves in professional caisses in order to decrease their expenditures. This resulted in higher costs for employers of more typical working populations who relied on burden sharing between firms with varying numbers of parents. In 1938 the state proposed a national compensation fund that would equalize employer expenses across caisses throughout France. Industrialists were the greatest proponents of national compensation – as long as administration remained in private hands – because eligibility among their workers was relatively high. Pronatalists also supported this measure in order to lighten the burden of employers in departments where birth-rates were above average. Detractors of national compensation were concentrated in textiles and commerce where workers tended to have fewer children. The resulting altercation between these constituencies of the family allowance movement was so fierce that it cast doubt on the efficacy of autonomous caisses de compensation. Indeed, by 1940 state officials began to wonder aloud whether a national state-managed system might be necessary to overcome the inherent problems of employer-controlled family welfare.