Raskausarvon

Raskausarvon is a term used in welfare economics and demography to quantify the economic value associated with pregnancy and childbearing. In Finnish discourse it denotes the estimated economic and social benefits and costs of having a child, including health care, parental leave, and long-term outcomes for families and society. Because it combines monetary and non-monetary effects, raskausarvon is not a fixed statistic but a framework for policy analysis.

Measurement approaches vary. The human capital approach tallies direct costs (prenatal care, delivery, pediatric care) and opportunity costs (lost wages during parental leave, career disruption). Non-market valuation methods attempt to capture intangible benefits, such as improved well-being and social cohesion, using willingness-to-pay measures or quality-of-life adjustments. Results are often presented as net costs or net benefits, sometimes as a net present value over a horizon.

Applications include evaluating family policies, such as parental leave schemes, childcare subsidies, and child allowances, to assess how policies influence birth rates, labor supply, and intergenerational welfare. Raskausarvon can also inform budgetary planning and social insurance design.

Critiques focus on ethical and methodological concerns: monetizing pregnancy and childbearing raises normative questions; estimates depend on assumptions about discount rates, time horizons, and valuation of non-market benefits; cross-country comparability is limited by data quality and policy context; and there is a risk of undervaluing caregiving and gendered labor.

See also: cost-benefit analysis, family policy, fertility economics, child benefits, social welfare.