On the face of it, this week's discussion over the fate of World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz is just another scandal about dodgy deals in high places. But the passions it has unleashed - Venezuela has left the World Bank - symbolise something deeper: a discord with a policy "consensus" among those affected by it, writes economics editor Marc Coleman.

In his book, Globalisation and its Discontents, former World Bank chief economist and Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz exposed how clever people with good intentions can get very insulated from realities on the ground. It happens at a domestic level as well.

Introduced by the double-income elites of Dublin in 2000 to the applause of the OECD, the policy of tax individualisation has become offensive to many who live another way of life that they see as just as valid.

The policy is a result of a way of thinking that assumes economic goals to be the only ones worth pursuing. They are, of course, not.

Economists can tell us how far down the road of material progress we can go and what sacrifices we will have to make.

After that it is up to us to find the right balance in our lives between values and valuations, prices and principles and wealth and well-being.

One could argue that work done by women in the home should be paid. Like the work done for free by nuns in hospitals and by priests in schools, its value to the economy is incalculably high. But doing so would be horrendously complex.

At the very least the tax system should respect the role of stay-at-home parents by according them the same tax status as their working partners.

In its arrogance, that is precisely what tax individualisation fails to do: a married couple with one partner staying at home pays the higher rate of income tax on income levels above €43,000. For a couple where both partners are working, that threshold is €68,000.

Potentially, a married one-income couple pay up to €5,250 a year alone in income tax. With all political parties committed to tax indexation (a good thing), that gap is set to grow even more over the next five years (not a good thing).

A remedy for this anomaly might have been to extend the employee tax credit to stay-at-home spouses.

Instead of offsetting about one-third of the above potential differential (€1,760) as this approach would have done, the fact that this credit is not extended increases that differential by the same amount.

At the moment, the home carers' tax credit is the only counterweight to individualisation in the tax system. This credit is worth €770 per annum.

To even begin to offset the combined inequity caused by tax thresholds and the non-extension of credits, this allowance would have to increase eightfold. Brought in - in fairness - to counter some of the injustice caused by individualisation, this allowance has, like so many others, fallen way behind the rate of inflation.

And we cannot ignore the fact that this allowance is also insensitive to the number of dependants being cared for. The allowance that is sensitive - the early childcare supplement - covers only part of the costs of raising a child.

Given the size of the injustice it perpetrates, the policy's benefits in terms of stimulating greater labour force participation seem hardly worth it.

In the three years preceding the introduction of tax individualisation, female labour force participation rose from 42 to 47 per cent of the women available for work.

In the following five years it rose just 3 per cent. So of the eight-point rise in participation since 1997, most of the increase took place before individualisation was introduced. Just what is an optimal rate of female labour force participation is a highly subjective question.

What does seem fair, however, is that with that rate increasing anyhow, measures that discriminate in favour of work in the economy over work in the home are unnecessary.

More than unnecessary, they are undesirable: recent falls notwithstanding, Irish house prices remain among the highest in the world. Utility bills are also relatively high.

Put together, these constitute the "fixed cost" of living; the costs that no couple can avoid no matter what choices they make.

Far from discouraging it, you might think that the tax code could play a role in preserving something that is under intense cultural attack.

Far from coming to the rescue, the tax code is joining forces with that attack, aided also by the high cost of living.

Besieged on all fronts, the traditional family appears headed for extinction. Economists are not qualified to predict the social consequences that this will have. For this we need sociologists.

But it seems a fair guess that they will be negative in direction and large in magnitude.

All parties have targeted the family in this election but, no matter which one is elected, a solution is unlikely to be found.

As regards tax reforms, the next government will do what the last one did: leave it until close to election day when the voters are paying most attention.

With spending commitments likely to get prioritised over tax reforms and with growth likely to fall short of expectations, relief for the stay-at-home spouse looks likely to be long in coming and short in measure.

That's a real pity. The commitment that someone makes in bringing children into the world and rearing them properly is one of the most awesome responsibilities in the world. Far more important than becoming president of the World Bank.