Hungary is opting for the latter:
The scheme—designed to boost the Hungarian birthrate—was announced at a recent government press conference in the Hungarian Parliament building attended by the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, János Lázár.
The scheme will see the state grant a non-repayable aid package of 10 million Hungarian Forints (HUF) to all couples agreeing to have three children within ten years.
According to the Global Property Guide, the average detached house price in Hungary is HUF 9.3 million.
Minister Lázár said that the grant was part of the extension of the government’s “family first home benefit.”
10 million forints is about $35,000.
You may recall that this is the exact same sum that George Soros is demanding that the EU pay each immigrant during just their first two years there. No wonder he and his minions hate Orban so much.
Seems that supporting natality is much cheaper than supporting immigration and will result in a great deal less racism and Islamophobia besides. Everybody wins.
Besides, its something that Hungary needs regardless. It is a real demographiz disaster zone. As seen in the chart right, deaths started outnumbered births there since 1981, a full decade ahead of trends in most of the rest of East-Central Europe.
A reminder that Russia managed to reverse an analogous state of affairs with not inconsiderable help from “maternal capital” – about $10,000 worth of housing aid for each child above one – implemented from the mid-2000s. The total fertility rate (TFR) went from 1.3 children per woman then to about 1.8 now. This flew in the face of demographic conventional wisdom, which tended to dismiss the efficacy of such pro-natality schemes. Hungary currently has a TFR of 1.4 children per woman. It would be interesting to see if it turns out to be another counter-example.
It would make more sense to pay people after they’ve had kids. The government can’t hold them to a promise to have kids in the future.
Prosvirnin, whom you’ve mentioned here, has called for Russian maternal capital to be replaced with tax incentives, with bigger tax breaks going to higher-earning families. That’s more eugenic than giving money to anyone who has kids. Specifically in Hungary the people who want to have the most kids are probably Gypsies. But a tax incentive program would cut a lot of them out of the loot – no income, no tax breaks.
Even with these seeming flaws, this is still better than what Western European governments are doing.
I’m sure hungarian gypsies are happy with these news.
The big problem of Eastern EU countries is that they invest a lot of money in their subsidized education and child health care system then they lose their young to western countries.
Nevertheless, boosting native natality is a must and Hungary has the only sane European government.
35 000 $ doesn’t sound like much for three children, but at least it’s worth a try.
In any case better than the lunacy in that joke of a country I’m living in.
Outlaw abortions – and the problem is fixed.
No, it’s not.
See Poland.
More children are not going to solve European cheap labor problem because native-born Whites never like to work as low-pay immigrants. As most Western countries have lost their African and Asian colonies, how the heck they’re going to feed their increased White population.
The only possible solution to Western birthrate decline is to control sex-slavery, LGBT, and put family before worldly greed. But, then that would mean Turkey’s president Erdogon’s to Muslim wives to have at least three kids.
http://rehmat1.com/2013/08/10/erdogan-urges-turkish-wife-to-have-3-kids/
To be frank, my recipe was, indeed, oversimplification, but in a case of Russia it might work. Lots of babies are being terminated there. Almost a million?
With regard to Poland, it’s low birthrate is probably exaggerated by the fact that a lot of young Poles still counted as living in Poland, are in fact residing (and having kids) abroad. I was always puzzled how Poles could be allegedly flooding into the UK and the rest of Western Europe, and yet population of Poland remained stable.
[It would make more sense to pay people after they’ve had kids. The government can’t hold them to a promise to have kids in the future.]
Indeed. This sounds more like a Monty Python sketch than a carefully thought out policy.
[Russia managed to reverse an analogous state of affairs with not inconsiderable help from “maternal capital” – about $10,000 worth of housing aid for each child above one – implemented from the mid-2000s. The total fertility rate (TFR) went from 1.3 children per woman then to about 1.8 now.]
But there was also a substantial increase in several other former USSR republics (not much in the Ukraine, though!) despite widely differing legislation.
Poland hasn’t actually had a census since 2002, so they can’t be accused of falsifying the results.
There may be an anti organised labour benefit for business, who have the resources to dominate the political process, but I see no reason for any society to maintain the population with immigrants (or more children) and indeed Merkel has never ever said that considerations of population size had any effect on her policy decision to take extra immigrants (one million this year alone). Syria and historical examples from history detailed by Gunnar Heinsohn show that a growing population in limited territory is a social time bomb.
I have read that many, many occupations will be disappearing shortly. Competition for the remaining jobs will keep wages stable. If the population size declines, and there is less paid work, where is the problem with fewer people in a country? Business will be able to live with less immigration as long as labour costs are not rising. The population are going to be largely redundant as everything but consumers, so what are extra people going to be doing a generation hence?
Nation states are survival machines organised to fight or prepare for conflict with other states. Preserving the indigenous population is a means not an end for the state, and short of a requirement to resist military pressure, or exert it, maintaining a cohesive indigenous population will always come a poor second to a mercantilism.
What do you prefer, Gypsies or immigrants?
No abortions causes other problems.
If you want good human capital, you should not do that.
Did Belarus managed to recover as much as Russia?
Last one was in 2011.
Poland has stable population because it has significant immigration.
Data for 2014 shows 350 000 immigrants (of them 250 000 Ukrainians and 75 000 Belarusians).
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7038745/3-20102015-BP-EN.pdf/70063124-c3f2-4dfa-96d5-aa5044b927a6
The former polish government engaged in population replacement program.
To get rid of ethnic Polish and import Ukrainians instead. Demographic of Poland changes rapidly.
Luckily the replacement is still white Eastern European.
Anyway this scheme was organized and financed on EU level.
Good to see that Poles are true Europeans and play our replacement game as well.
Why yes! Thanks for the correction, it is indeed mentioned in some sources. Still, these days one never knows whether or not it is actually one of those sleazy register-based affairs.
Yes.
In the absence of children it will have to be paid back with interest.
Gypsies have a tfr of 3.0 anyway. I think there are some strings attached (having been employed for x years, a clean record, etc.) which make it difficult for Gypsies to qualify.
Orbán has already introduced tax breaks for children, amid heavy criticism from the left. It didn’t help tfr improve much, but I think it changed its composition.
Congratulations.
So do they have to put up collateral for the debt? How easily can they discharge it? In the event of divorce, who is responsible? And what if they present a medical excuse for not reaching the number? There seem to be many problems with the plan.
The money can only be used to build or purchase new homes, so I guess the new home will be the collateral.
Not all details are yet announced, I think there’s some talk that in case of medical problems, the money also has to be paid back, but on easier terms, e.g. maybe without interest and on a much longer schedule. The idea being, that if you don’t have children, you have more money ceteris paribus.
Rubbish.
Compared to the average salary in Hungary, that’s substantial enough.
Poles apparently had a census in 2011, but seem to be terrified of publishing the results. I couldn’t find any “total population” data from it. I personally suspect that the real number of Poles living in Poland is some 2-3 million lower than the official data suggests. Admitting it would cut the amount of “cohesion funds” transferred to them from the EU budget.
Ukrainians have just postponed their own 2016 census until 2020, probably out of fear that population had collapsed towards the 30 million mark. I predict that as 2020 approaches, they’ll postpone it again, as the country remains stuck in a veritable death spiral.
Judging by western (or Russian) achievements from pre-abortion and post-abortion eras, human capital wasn’t any worse when it was not allowed. One could argue it was much better.
38511824 is the figure they gave, but as I say, it might not be a real count from scratch.
http://citypopulation.de/Poland-Cities.html
Thanks! I personally think Polish census numbers make Chinese stats look stellar in comparison. It’s pretty much impossible to reconcile them with the tales of millions of Poles popping up all over the western Europe. The very same 2011 census rules out any compensatory Ukrainian or Belarussian immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_census_of_2011
There seems to be a glitch on the site…on the main page it says there are 29 replies for this thread, but when I click on the thread only ten are shown (just as there were yesterday).
Often have had the same issue with Razib Khan’s blog and other threads from AK’s blog, though never for that long.
Somewhat annoying…would be nice if that could be fixed.
EDIT: Odd, now that I wrote this post, I can see all 30 replies…strange.
I agree about the results of the Polish census data.
The results of the recent Georgian state census showed a much lower population number than expected.
Poland has a motive to keep the true Polish population number a state secret.
WTF, Ukrainian demographic data will be completely unreliable.
The last census of the Ukraine was done in 2001. There won’t be any in the foreseeable future. Why would a bunch of oligarchs conduct a census? It would cost money that they could steal instead.
They’re still recording birth statistics though. I got curious – call it collapse porn. The number of births in August of 2015 was 12.7% lower than in August of 2013. That’s comparing apples to apples (in other words, both times without the Crimea or the two Donbass regions).
Here are the details.
Ukraine demographics:
Birth rate – 9.7/1000 Death rate – 16.4/1000 Migration – negative 5.4/1000
Sum total (9.7 minus 16.4 minus 5.4) = negative 11.1/1000!!!
So, every year Ukraine is losing around half a million people (of course not reflected in phony government estimates of a net loss about 3 times smaller).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
With this kind of demography no economic recovery is possible, ever. Any positive interest rate on any debt is too high, since dwindling workforce cannot service even a coupon, let alone repayment of principal.
It looks like Russians may have gotten really lucky by “losing” this basket case, while the West had “won” itself a permanent economic black hole.
The scariest part is that all of Eastern Europe looks more or less similar.
Does anyone know if this is true? A pro-natalist policy needs to be concerned with what kind of people it influences. If this was done in the United States, it would probably be offered to single mothers in order not to discriminate. But I hope Hungary has a more logical policy, ensuring some sort of quality control.
Correction: total for Ukraine is negative 12.1/1000 (should have used calculator))), not 11.1/1000
Yep.
They’ve all gone to England.
My solution for higher birth rates would be;
Create very generous financial incentives for married couples to stay married and have plenty of children
Create a culture of social conservatism
I recently visit Budapest and the major concern is the lack of opportunities. All European countries have basically the same problem. Young men and women cannot find good jobs so they avoid having children.
Too much instability in the East for a realistic census as scheduled, plus they don’t know yet whether to include Donbas or not.
Ukrainian population change varies by region. Parts of it have been very far from a death spiral:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine#/media/File:NaturalGrowth2012.PNG
Even a dying tree has a few green branches. Ukrainian data is as fake as a Polish one, since the official figures don’t reflect mass emigration.
Which is an excuse because the Ukrainian government is not interested in stabilizing the East.
Maybe they should drop their claims on Donbas if they are not willing to treat it as part of Ukraine.
Is it one tree or several?
There is also migration data. 2012:
http://s017.radikal.ru/i403/1302/24/29f367a6fd4f.png
1989-2011:
http://s61.radikal.ru/i171/1304/8e/653b84deedd4.png
Here’s a leftist criticism of the proposal, while the criticism is idiotic, at least it contains details of the plan.
So you can apply if you already have the three children, or only one or two of them, or none. In any event you have to pledge to have three children by the end of a ten-year period at the latest.
Single parents or non-married couples can apply, but only if they already have all the three children. Otherwise they have to promise that the coming future child or children will already be born into a family, in other words, they have to promise that they will get married before the birth of the promised children.
You need to have been employed for at least two years (I’m not sure if this requirement is for both parents or only one of them). (Difficult for Gypsies.)
You are required to have a clean record. (Ditto difficult for Gypsies.)
You need to be able to obtain bank credit. (I.e. high credit score, very difficult for Gypsies.)
The same criteria are applied to people with adopted children, or who plan to adopt children.
At least one of the parents has to be under 40 (even for adoptive parents), unless they already have the three children (in which case it doesn’t apply).
If they are unable to conceive for medical reasons (unclear how to prove), they’ll have to pay it back. If they have no proof of medical reasons, they’ll have to pay it back with a high interest rate.
It will only be possible to use the money to buy a new home. If it’s an apartment, it has to be twenty times as large (in quadrat meters) as the number of children in the family. (That’s not very large, actually quite small, but my leftist source is complaining.) If it’s a house, it has to be thirty times the number of children. (Still not large, but at least I can imagine how a family of 5 can live there.)
This is so… sane and rational. Wow. Good for Hungary.
That’s amazing. Thanks for the details.
Since you apparently understand Hungarian, can you do a bit of research on whether one parent has to be employed or both? It would be very weird if such a sane policy was wedded to feminist ideas about women having to work.
I’m happy that there are sane leaders in the world.
I can see putting up money for the first kid, then staggering the rest. That will at least get them started.
Antinatalists like to point out that if you are going to have a kid, just putting it off for a year or so helps the cause. Likewise, starting earlier helps the natalist cause.