Madrid, Spain, Jun 25, 2010 / 09:52 am
The president of the Institute for Family Policy, Eduardo Hertfelder, has criticized the decision by the Spanish government to cut economic aid for families and warned that President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is becoming “the worst president for families in Spanish history.”
Hertfelder said the decline in aid from 42 to 24 euro ($52 to $30) per month for each child under age three has made the situation even worse for poor families. “If the measure is not revoked and ends up becoming law, once again it will be clear that this government only ‘thinks’ of the family when it wants to endanger it,” he said.
Likewise, Hertfelder said the policy is being implemented despite the fact that only the poorest of families—one in nine—apply for this aid, and that the number of births dropped in 2009, falling five percent from what they were in 2008.
All of this makes the family the most abandoned social group in Spain and shows the government has no political will to help it, he concluded.