The first part of this piece examined the phenomenon of worldwide demographic collapse and introduced Hungary’s family policy within the context of similar policies instituted elsewhere, as in Australia, where the ‘Baby Bonus’ was immediately successful in raising the declining birthrate. In Hungary, family policy has been framed to address not only the social reality of demographic collapse, but also the desire of families to have—and to be able to provide for—more children.
Since 2010, that is precisely what the Fidesz government has been attempting to do. A big part of what State Secretary for Families Ágnes Hornung labels the ‘family turnaround’ is the link to marriage. Most of the benefits and payments in the family policy suite are tied to couples being, and staying, married. This has had remarkable results. The number of divorces in Hungary dropped from almost 24,000 in 2010 to 17,500 in 2022, a 27% decrease. Most impressive, though, is the number of marriages. In 2010 there were 35,500 marriages. By 2021, the number had more than doubled to 72,000, before dropping to 64,100 in 2022.
Marriages alone do not promote child-bearing, though. In the case of Australia, the simple ‘Baby Bonus’ cash payment encouraged increased fertility. By contrast, the Fidesz Government has implemented a complex raft of policies. By Hornung’s count, there are “more than 30 different measures” that make up the Fidesz family policy suite. These measures are linked, not only to marriage, but also to work: “It is not an aid-based approach. The goal is to enable parents to live for their children, not to earn from their children.” They include various payments, interest-free loans, and tax benefits. “While we have tried many measures,” said Hornung, “predictability is key—if we can give predictability to everyone, people can plan for more children.”
The system is designed to support the whole life of the child until adulthood. Some measures assist with financial stability from the beginning of marriage. Newlywed couples receive modest monthly payments for 24 months. Individuals who work 40 hours a week and are under the age of 25 receive financial support from the government of up to 75,000 Hungarian Forints (HUF) per month. These policies are designed to help young people prepare financially for marriage and child-rearing.
Once those babies arrive, the benefits flow. Couples can access up to a 10 million HUF loan, called the ‘Baby Expecting Loan,’ which has interest-free repayments if a child is born within 5 years of the application. Families are free to spend this money on whatever they wish, and once a couple has had three or more children the government pays the whole loan for them.
This policy is closer to the Australian Baby Bonus. However, the tax benefits system is particularly interesting. “These tax benefits are, as far as I am aware, unique in the world,” suggests Hornung, and include a life-long exemption from personal income tax for any woman who has four or more children. But they do not stop there. Thanks to Hungary’s family-focused taxation benefits, the average Hungarian family with three or more children essentially pays no personal income tax. “It is also part of our policy program to encourage earlier child-bearing,” said Hornung, “because people who start younger tend to have more children.” Accordingly, women who give birth before their 30th birthday pay no income tax again until they reach their third decade of life.
But these financial benefits are not the extent of the Fidesz ‘family turnaround’ program. The policies also take into account what some call ‘Car Seat Economics.’ In 2021, MIT economists Jordan Nickerson and David Solomon made the case that car seat laws act as a barrier method for potential parents. They argued in their paper “Car Seats as Contraception” that “Many cars cannot easily accommodate three child seats in the back row of seats, as would be needed if both front seats are occupied by adults. This especially increases the cost of a third child for many families, by necessitating the purchase of a larger car.”
Even seemingly unrelated laws or living arrangements, like car-seat mandates or house sizes, can affect fertility. Nickerson and Solomon suggest that jurisdictions that have car seat mandates for older children saw decreases in birth rates as a result. Similarly, I was told by a Hungarian colleague that “Housing is a very big issue in Hungary—most people live in smaller apartments and homes and it is difficult to rationalize having a larger family when you can’t fit them into your home.”
The Hungarian government has identified this problem, and is attempting to address it through generous loan schemes, such as the CSOK Program. Introduced in 2015, this provides non-refundable subsidies of up to 10 million HUF, as well as low-interest mortgage loans to help either purchase or renovate a home. “Housing is a huge challenge,” admits Hornung, “so we try to help families overcome this barrier through these loans.” Similar subsidies were previously available to purchase larger cars, a policy that has since been discontinued. “The CSOK has been fine-tuned several times since 2015,” said Beneda. “We are always trying to get these policies right.”
Many policies also aim at helping working parents continue their careers whilst having children. There are allowances for grandparents who care for their grandchildren to support parents returning to work. Increasingly generous paternity and maternity leave arrangements have been put in place since 2010, with these measures aimed at increasing both fertility and workforce participation. Workplaces are incentivized to be more family-friendly, too, with greater flexibility for working parents becoming a part of the Hungarian public and private sectors. On this point, Beneda noted that “In Hungary, the employment rate of women is 5% above the EU average,” a statistic he credits to Fidesz’s family policies.
These policies are just the headlines from a more complex suite of proposals, which includes further tax incentives, payments for parents who stay at home to care for their children, increased funding for child-care places, and free textbooks for school students across the entirety of their studies. And the government is trying to stay in touch with what is happening on the ground. “We keep up a continuous relationship with our strategic partners in the non-government sector,” said Hornung. “These organizations are focused on supporting families of all types, and we regularly consult them because they see life on the ground for the everyday Hungarian.”
A Cultural Counterrevolution
But is it going to work? Hornung maintains that, thus far, things are on track. “Looking at the numbers, our policies are a success. Fertility is higher than it was in 2010. And Hungary has seen the highest increase in fertility rates in the EU.” Gladden Pappin, previously a visiting fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium and associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas, also lauds the Fidesz policies as a possible pathway out of a demographic winter.
However, not everyone agrees that the policies are having a significant impact. Lyman Stone, from Demographic Intelligence and the Institute for Family Studies, is skeptical of the idea that the Hungarians have turned things around through their family policies. For example, he is critical of the bold claims made for the CSOK program: “Hungary’s birth rate was increasing. Then the CSOK was implemented, and birthrates stopped rising.” Furthermore, Stone suggests that Hungary’s modest baby boom since 2010 could be better explained by economic factors proceeding independently of the government’s pro-natalist agenda. “With a major economic turnaround (and a reduction in marriage disincentives baked into several welfare programs), marriage rates boomed, abortion rates fell, and birth rates rose. That’s an argument for competent economic management, not family policy.”
However, why haven’t other countries who experienced a similar economic turnaround had a similar baby boom? It might be because Hungary’s policies really do work. Hornung argues that they are making a difference. She also admits that family policy is a long game: “Implementing family policy is hard work. In the short run, you are at a disadvantage compared to those countries that use immigration and see short-term economic benefits. You have to accept that it is a long-term policy play.” The Fidesz government has set a long-term goal for arresting the fertility decline, aiming to see Hungary return to replacement levels by 2030.
One question that haunts this conversation about family policy is the question of culture. The saying goes that politics is downstream from culture. Perhaps the same goes for family formation. Ross Douthat suggested as much in Plough, when he posited three primary reasons people don’t have that “extra child.” First, Douthat suggests that a decline in the connection between members of the opposite sex, due to new social habits formed by technology, is “pushing the sexes ever further apart.” Second, he argues that “a rich society offers more everyday pleasures that are hard to cast aside in the way that parenthood requires.” Finally, Douthat posits that secularization has removed the broadly Christian underpinnings of procreation—there is almost no belief anymore in a divine mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Hornung recognizes this challenge. “Policy measures are not enough,” she concedes. “The family turnaround is also a way of thinking. Apart from the policy measures, we want to strengthen the family models.” This amounts to an admission that there is a limit to what politics and policy can achieve for something like fertility rates. The issue of culture was also raised when I spoke to some Hungarian secondary school students and asked them how many children they wanted to have. The answers varied from none to six, but I was intrigued by a comment from a young lady who said that “It is very hard to balance having babies with pursuing a career.”
Her comment is also indicative of the way Western people have been conditioned to think. The priority of career, and the idea that child-bearing and child-rearing are a barrier to this, is a cultural construction of very recent provenance. Women pursuing professional careers is a wider cultural phenomenon only seen in the last few decades, and women desiring to do so at the expense of having a family is even more an anomaly of our time. So, too, is the prioritization of hedonism over the hard and costly work of family formation—overseas holidays and regular brunches seemingly come before procreation.
One thing missing from this discussion is the joy of childrearing. People are usually unaware of what it means to be a parent before the arrival of that first baby. Becoming a father or a mother is an existential crisis. One’s world collapses and is rebuilt around a completely different set of priorities and responsibilities. These responsibilities are sometimes chosen, and sometimes they are not. Things that were previously valued and cared about withdraw into the background and perhaps even disappear.
There is no cold, impersonal ‘parental contract’ whereby you are obligated by some metaphysical fiction to care for the newly-arrived abstract individual until the said individual can look after themselves. Rather, one becomes the parent of a person to whom there are duties and obligations that were not chosen, yet which nevertheless have a kind of non-negotiable sanctity. One acquires these duties and obligations through the bearing of the child, and one loves the child in a painful and almost impossible way. Financial costs, holidays, and careers understandably intrude on this experience. Yet they need not diminish or eliminate the new, spiritual obligations involved in becoming a parent.
There is a tension here. There are competing goods for the late-modern, decadent Western person in relation to family and fertility. This competition might prove intractable. Perhaps there are not enough late-modern persons prepared to embrace this experience of sacrifice and the abandonment of the buffered self that comes with being a parent. Does this mean that we are doomed to a demographic winter? As school closures in Japan eerily echo the dystopian scenario depicted by P. D. James in Children of Men, Hungary might be the exception that proves the rule. On the other hand, Hungary might demonstrate the limits of public policy and the importance of culture. If the latter turns out to be the case, the population game might be over in the West, no matter what policies we try.
