Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, has several populist policies, one of which has been to grow Hungary’s native population.
But early successes appear to be running out of steam in Hungary, as its birth rate is still falling despite huge incentives being offered to new parents.
Populations across Western Europe are struggling with falling birth rates, which threaten long-term economic growth and could create a healthcare crisis as fewer young people are forced to care for and subsidize an increasingly older population.
However, financial barriers, such as rising accommodation prices, are a major obstacle to childbearing, which has been compounded by the cost of living crisis. Changing workplace dynamics, with more women enjoying meaningful careers, also push back the average age for couples to have their first child.
Immigration is regarded as the most realistic way of maintaining an optimal average population age, but that has become highly politically contentious since the global financial crash.
Hungary’s fight to increase childbirth
Hungary is particularly sensitive to immigration, which Orbán has repeatedly argued would harm the country’s cultural fabric. From 2025, immigrants from non-EU countries will have to pass a Hungarian history and culture test to become residents of the country.
Instead, it is championing the classic populist policy of increased childbirth among natives.
“We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” Orbán said in his State of the Nation address in 2019 as he rolled out childbirth incentives.
To do so, Hungary is offering weighty financial incentives to up appearances in its hospital’s midwifery units.
In 2019, Hungary offered parents a €30,000 interest-free loan to spend on anything they wanted. The loan would be forgiven if they had three children.
Mothers of four children or more are exempt from paying income taxes under Orbán’s policy, which could be extended to those with fewer children.
Hungary’s birth rate rose through the 2010s, rising from a record low of 1.25 in 2011 to 1.61 in 2021. But in recent years, growth has halted. In June, Hungary registered a record-low number of 6,000 births.
Wolfgang Lutz, founding director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna, told the Financial Times that the policies had merely pushed forward births among women who had intended to have children at some stage in their lives anyway.
Those on lower incomes complained to the publication that the subsidies weren’t adequate to incentivize having more children, which became increasingly expensive to manage more children. The removal of income tax does little for self-employed workers, for example.
Permeating the debate has been an encouragement for the growth of “traditional,” heterosexual family units.
Hungary’s policies are focused on incentives for new mothers, while in 2021 the country introduced laws that banned LGBT content from being shown in schools, something the U.S. and EU labeled as “discriminatory.”
Populist swing
Increasing childbirth has long been a critical policy anchor of right-leaning populist governments, allowing them to solidify their stance as self-proclaimed protectors of traditional family values while offering them an anti-immigration platform.
While Orbán’s birthing policy looks to be on the ropes, the playbook does have one high profile proponent: U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
Vance suggested in 2021 that Americans with children should get more votes than their childless peers. While on the campaign trail at the same time, Vance also hailed Orbán’s push for more births.
“Viktor Orbán, who is, of course, the bugaboo of nearly every liberal in the mainstream American media, has implemented a couple of policies that I think are really interesting.
“They offer loans to new married couples that are forgiven at some point later if those couples eventually stay together and have children. Why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we actually promote family formation here in our country?”
Vance recently walked back his comments on giving more votes to parents, describing them as a “thought experiment” amid heavy backlash.
