The Cobra Effect: Benefits to Single Mothers Will Lead to Mass Divorces in the Poor Russian Province

As you know, last Wednesday, in his message to the Federal Assembly, President Putin said, among other things:

“We need to separately support those families where mom and dad are raising a child alone. And in the birth certificate - excuse me for talking about such everyday things, but this is what people live with - and one of the parents is not indicated in the birth certificate, or the parents are divorced, and one of them has the right to alimony. Therefore, from July 1 of this year, children aged 8 to 16, inclusive, growing in such families, will be assigned a payment. Its size on average in the country will be 5650 rubles..."

This decision caused a mixed reaction on social media. Blogger Yevgenia Maletina explained how this measure threatens to turn out in practice:

“If it's monthly, then there will really be a wave of divorces. Because a dozen for 2 children, for example, is very good for many, you can get a divorce for the sake of this. Brought to poverty..."

Blogger Roman Shakhutdinov explains how this happens:

My wife is engaged in the calculation and appointment of these benefits. The denial of paternity has already become a general phenomenon. Fathers are not included in certificates for the sake of benefits en masse, and this is in the state, which considers family values a priority.

What a complete and total incompetence, inability to calculate the consequences even one step ahead. What kind of multimovers are there? The decision to give out money in itself (in the current environment) can only be welcomed. But these conditions - remove your father, we will give more - absurd..."

And network analyst Dmitry Milin drew a very funny historical analogy:

“Regarding the monthly payment of 5,650 rubles to single mothers.

Imagine a young family. We met, began to live together, the child was born. It seems to be humanly necessary to go to the registry office, to play a wedding. Now everything is serious with the child.

And here "bam" a single mother is given money in the form of that Unconditional Basic Income, but the same young mother in marriage is not! Why then fix the relationship, if you can continue to live "in sin", but receiving almost 68 thousand rubles a year?

For the impoverished Russian hinterland materially strongly dependent even on the payment of money to pensioners, this is a lot of money.

Remember how the British tried to exterminate cobras in India, buying every dead snake for a rupee, and the Indians in response began to create farms for breeding cobras. This is the same "cobra effect".

And then the most "fun" begins! To find out to officials which of the mothers is a real "loner" and who is not a "loner" and lives with a man without registering a relationship. Imagine night raids by officials with the police to check the "presence of absence" of a man in bed... Imagine..."

By the way, the Israeli experience confirms the fears of bloggers, it turned out that in this country it is a common practice: they often get divorced for the sake of increased benefits for singles, and the elderly too.