Which European country provides paid parental leave\u2014for mothers or fathers\u2014for three years and free or heavily subsidised nursery care from the age of three? Plus extra holiday leave for parents, free school textbooks, state holiday camps and free or really cheap school and nursery meals? And a generous housing subsidy for families with children, plus a loan for would-be parents of \u20ac35,000 (\u00a330,000) which goes down with each child and is written off at the third child?<\/p>\n
Sweden? Finland? Somewhere Nordic?<\/p>\n
Nope. We\u2019re talking Hungary. Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government wants Hungarians to have more babies, to bolster a 9.8m population that has declined by a tenth since its peak of 10.7m in 1980. In common with many European countries, especially in the east, this is below the replacement rate. The policy means a woman who has four children will never pay income tax again.<\/p>\n
In charge of the policy is Katalin Nov\u00e1k. She has three children of her own and would have liked a fourth, but instead she is running the families ministry. Its budget is now 4.6 per cent of GDP, a startling two and a half times rise on spending under the previous centre-left government. Nov\u00e1k\u2019s Swedish counterpart, Annika Strandh\u00e4ll, dismissed the policy as a return to the 1930\u2019s. \u201cWe\u2019re not persuading anyone\u201d, says Nov\u00e1k. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even use the word \u2018incentive\u2019. To have a child is always a personal matter. We\u2019re enabling young couples to have as many children as they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
The average young couple would like 2.1 children. The actual figure has already risen from a record low of 1.23 in 2011, when the Orban government took office, to 1.5 .<\/p>\n
A Hungarian friend, a career civil servant, has two sons and says she is seriously thinking about a third child. \u201cThe incentives do make a difference,\u201d she says. And what about a fourth, so as never to pay taxes again? \u201cAh no,\u201d she said, \u201cthere\u2019s a big difference between three and four.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such a highly interventionist, well-funded social programme should be attracting plaudits. But it runs headlong into outsiders\u2019 preconceptions about both Hungary (reactionary) and parenting (disguised patriarchy). The Guardian<\/i> fumed, \u201cSo long as child rearing is understood as primarily work for women, attempts to encourage large families will inevitably be seen as attempts to chase women out of the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not at all, says, Nov\u00e1k. \u201cFathers can also stay at home.\u201d Most benefits, she says, apply to both parents. \u201cWe doubled parents\u2019 extra holidays so fathers can take that. We enable fathers to be present in family life. But something\u2019s happening by itself: men, educated men, want to take a role in childrearing. If you ask young men how they think of themselves in the future, they actually say they want to be active fathers. That\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, she says, no life path is better than another, whether you have nine children or none at all. \u201cWe just enlarge the room for manoeuvre.\u201d She herself enjoyed the six years she spent with her young children: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have given it up for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does her own husband help? \u201cLots. He\u2019s away at the moment, and there\u2019s nothing in the fridge, because he does the shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grants to parents operate mostly via the tax system, raising questions about its usefulness for the country\u2019s large Roma (gypsy) population, which mostly functions outside the formal economy. \u201cWe do link work and family benefits,\u201d says Nov\u00e1k, \u201cbut you don\u2019t have to be wealthy. You do have to work. That\u2019s very important. The unemployment rate is now 3.5 per cent, and if someone wants work they can find work. Whatever kind of background you have, you can play your part. We have a public works scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nor does she buy the idea it\u2019s an anti-immigrant move; it began, she said, under the first Orb\u00e1n government, before the refugee crisis.<\/p>\n
Housing subsidies for families are, she says, \u201cquite generous\u201d. If you plan to have three children you can have a \u20ac25,000 subsidy. You can also get a credit of \u20ac50,000 (less for fewer children) to buy or build with a low interest rate. This is a \u201chome subsidy\u201d she says, not a housing subsidy. It helps the construction industry too.<\/p>\n
If you are married (in Hungary only heterosexual marriage is legal) and say you\u2019re planning to have children, you can get a general loan of \u20ac35,000; there is a reduction of 35 per cent in the amount you pay back for each successive child. Unsurprisingly, marriage is at a 40-year high.<\/p>\n
Benefits for children, however, are given to everyone. Poorer children get free school meals, four a day in day-care; three in nursery. Every child is entitled to a childcare place, free for about half of children, and heavily subsidised for the rest. Attendance at kindergarten is compulsory. Otherwise, she points out, children could arrive at school without social skills.<\/p>\n
The point of all this spending\u2014Nov\u00e1k prefers the term \u201cinvestment\u201d\u2014is that \u201cwe want to be a family friendly country.\u201d If it sounds the opposite of the young women giving up on having children to save the planet, it is. \u201cWho are we trying to save it for,\u201d she asks, \u201cif not for our children and grandchildren?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hungary\u2019s natalist policies are both generous and effective<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-speaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9664,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/9664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}