With a great many companies still adhering to such employment practices as the seniority system, taking time off from work to raise a child often became a decision with serious consequences. Thus, the institutional set-up did not lend itself to checking the declining birth rate.
In spite of these demographic changes, the pension and other social security systems remained largely based on the bell-shaped population curve. As far as the structure of public finance is concerned, both the United States and the United Kingdom made progress toward "a smaller and more efficient government" under severe economic conditions during the latter half of the 1980s.