Hungary: Generous child subsidies fail to stop falling birth rate

Author, Stephanie Hegarty Place of work, BBC correspondent on world population issues and Author, Zsofia Paulikowicz Place of work, BBC News Magyarul Published 4 minutes ago Reading time: 6 min Sitting on a bench on a leafy university campus in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, Barbara Elek nervously monitors her email inbox. She and her husband Levi are awaiting the results of their third IVF attempt ten days ago.

“If it doesn’t work out, of course it will be a terrible blow for me,” she says in an interview with BBC Global Women.

But her anxiety is not only related to the inability to become a mother.

If unsuccessful, the couple could face a serious financial blow.

Like many young Hungarian families, Barbara, a social worker, and Levy, a chef, became eligible for large government loans and subsidies after committing to having two children.

However, when it turned out that it was impossible to conceive a child naturally, the situation became sharply more complicated.

If by November of this year the spouses cannot confirm that they are expecting a child, they will have to return the received loans along with penalty interest. According to them, such payments will absorb almost half of the family income.

Over the past 16 years, under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Hungary has implemented one of the world's largest and most generous fertility programs.

BBC WhatsApp channel Here we publish only the main news and the most interesting texts. The channel is available for non-Russian numbers. Subscribe End of story WhatsApp Channel Advertising Among its key elements were preferential loans, the terms of which became more and more favorable depending on how many children the spouses promised to have. After the birth of the third child, the debt was completely written off.

Hungary annually allocated 4–5% of GDP—almost $16 billion—to these measures. This is comparable to the level of defense spending that NATO recommends to its member states. In parallel, the authorities launched a large-scale campaign to promote the image of “family-oriented Hungary.”

Mate and Agi Gorondi have five children under ten years of age. The family took advantage of generous maternity benefits and government subsidies to renovate their home and buy a larger car.

Mate, who works as an independent business development consultant, receives tax benefits that increase with each child. And Agi, as a mother of more than two children, will be completely exempt from income tax when returning to work.

“We felt like government policies really influenced our decision to have children by creating a positive environment for families,” Mate says.

According to him, in their village - a wealthy suburb of Budapest - the number of families raising four or even five children has increased significantly in recent years.

For some time, Hungarian policy actually brought results. The fertility rate has increased from 1.25 children per woman in 2010 to 1.61 in 2020. Many called it a remarkable success, especially American conservatives who advocate greater government support for families.

However, in the last three years, the indicator began to decline again and dropped to 1.31 - only slightly higher than the level at which it was at the time the program was launched.

“These measures seem to have worked only for a while, like most pronatalist programs,” said Eva Fodor, co-director of the Institute for Democracy at Central European University.

In her opinion, financial incentives pushed some people to have children, which they already planned to have, but did so ahead of schedule.

“So the birth rate went up for a while—a year or two—and then started going down again,” she says.

According to Timothy P. Carney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of several books on fertility decline, Orbán's greatest achievement has been making the family central to the political agenda.

However, he said, “part of the problem is that we overestimate the impact of financial incentives. Orbán has achieved some success, but this success has also shown the costs and limitations of family politics.”

Hungary is far from the only country that has tried to increase fertility through financial incentives and social policies.

South Korea's fertility rate in 2008 was 1.19 children per woman, one of the lowest in the world. Since then, authorities have spent about $290 billion on programs to encourage births.

Parents receive a lump sum payment at birth of a child ranging from 27 to 40 thousand dollars, monthly child benefits, as well as special vouchers to pay for private kindergartens and child care services.

However, during this time, the total fertility rate in the country did not increase, but, on the contrary, continued to decline, reaching 0.8 in 2025.

Some experts believe that the rise and subsequent decline in the birth rate in Hungary was not directly related to government policy at all and rather reflected general demographic trends in Eastern European countries.

The Czech Republic is often cited as an example, which did not introduce such large-scale pronatalist programs, but at the same time experienced a similar increase in the birth rate, and then a similar decline.

Barbara and Levi met online nine years ago, when they were in their early twenties. A year later they got married.

They always knew that they wanted two children, so in 2020 they took out a government “loan for future parents” for 10 million forints (about 33 thousand dollars).

When attempts to conceive naturally failed, the couple was referred to a government IVF clinic located about an hour and a half from their home.

To avoid penalties if the pregnancy does not occur, Barbara must prove that she did everything possible to conceive.

According to the rules of the program, she must undergo four IVF cycles, but so far only three have taken place.

So on the eve of the next visit, she laid out all the collected documents on the table - several thick folders with medical certificates and financial papers confirming her attempts to become a mother.

“They literally took control of everything,” Barbara says.

Collecting these documents became a way for her to “regain at least some sense of control over my own life.”

Another participant in the program who took advantage of government benefits is Antonia Miskolczi. Despite this, she considers the government's family policy a "poorly calculated allocation of money" and says that the loans had no impact on her decision on the number of children.

“For me, one important condition was that we could take this money only if it did not in any way affect our plans for the children,” she says.

The 29-year-old Budapest resident, who has one child, said the healthcare system under Orban's government was "in a terrible state." In her opinion, public funds should have been spent primarily on improving public services.

During her pregnancy, she remembers watching videos on social media about what mothers-to-be take to the hospital and being shocked that women were encouraged to bring their own toilet paper and sanitizer.

As a result, Antonia decided to give birth in a private clinic.

The new Hungarian government, which came to power in April, recently announced an extension of the time frame within which program participants must meet the conditions for having children. Authorities also said they were looking for solutions for families who were unable to have the promised number of children.

One of the most difficult issues for the government will be the fate of the benefit programs themselves. Despite controversial results, they remain popular among the population.

According to Antonia Miskolczi, abandoning them could cause a “huge public reaction” since “people have already built their life plans around these programs.”