Hungary has seen a surge in marriages in 2019 following the introduction of government incentives for couples to marry and have children, but the reforms have yet to deliver a boost to the country’s plummeting birth rates.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his administration have offered several financial incentives for couples in the country to marry and have children, including subsidized loans to those who marry before the bride’s 41st birthday.
Incentives to have children are built into the loan. One-third of it can be forgiven if the married couple has two children, and the entire loan can be forgiven if they have three children. Hungary claims the policy is working—its central statistics office recently reported a 20% increase in marriages in the first nine months of 2019, compared to the same nine-month period of 2018, according to Reuters.
“The bottom line is that having a child is a heavy lift, and no policy is going to make up someone’s mind to do it,” Last told CNA. The causes of low birth rates for young women tend to be more cultural than a product of rational economic thinking, Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, assistant professor of social research and economic thought at the Catholic University of America, said.
“My read is that if you talk to women in their early 20s, you will get a response that sounds very conscious and deliberate. But the choices that ‘make sense’ to people seem to be highly informed by something in the [cultural] water,” Pakaluk told CNA.
