Corporations could just do the same thing. Henry Ford historically had doubled people's salary to get them to have families. This was contingent on a bunch of paternalistic rules and inspections (like participants weren't allowed to drink for example).

From an organizational perspective, really cunning managers understand this: if your reports have kids, they probably aren't going to job hop for more money or better work. It gives significant leverage over employees.

So I don't see why the public sector would need to do this, either the public or private sector could do it. If you lump the US government in with the corporations as two agents which punch down, life in the US could actually be seen as more oppressive than other places. It really depends. The US could accomplish a relatively totalitarian end result with the same form of government just by creating a couple strong economic incentives for corporations. Generally the US govt in its current form prefers delegation to the private sector