A turnaround in demographic trends is crucial for the long-term social development and economic sustainability of Hungary and Europe, and this requires a predictable, targeted and flexible family policy, Justice Minister Judit Varga said on Friday.
The basic principle of family policy in Hungary is that families should not suffer any financial disadvantages as a result of having children. Rather, they should benefit from it, Varga told a conference held on the subject in Budapest. Families are eligible for special support in Hungary, with over 5 percent of GDP given to families raising children last year, which puts the country in the leading group among the OECD member countries on this score, she added.
State secretary in charge of families Ágnes Hornung told the event that the government planned to “fine-tune” family policy measures to encourage more births and improve families’ financial circumstances. The aim is to ensure that all families who want children should be able to fulfil their desire and parents should be able to maintain a good balance of family and work.
Read alsoPHOTO GALLERY: Everyday life in ’50s Hungary
Ever since 2010, the government has been making efforts to offer predictability to families, she said. “A complex and well-prepared system has been developed by the family-friendly government to support families, but this does not mean that no changes would be needed or it would be impossible to make changes,” she added.
Read alsoExpat mums share their experiences living in Hungary II
Source: MTI
2 Comments
Facts, please. What Mrs. Varga is saying is that our fertility rate needs to get back to 1978 levels:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=HU
No pressure, then! This is why most if not all developed countries are working on controlled immigration and have an integration policy (hint: we do not have one).
Just for fun: “Emigration from Hungary. Average salaries, the cost of living, and the lack of job opportunities led to thousands of Hungarians leaving the country each year. Their primary destinations were other member states of the European Union. Specifically, in 2021, almost 192 thousand Hungarians resided in Germany, another 91 thousand in Austria, and 18 thousand in the Netherlands.”.
Guessing it is not the unskilled and uneducated who are voting with their feet – and the 2022 net migration numbers may be shocking!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1011177/hungary-net-migration/
Unfortunately, Norbet, not all developed countries have controlled immigration. Are you forgetting Sweden that now has grenade attacks and gang wars? Or the Islamist attacks in France and the UK which have sparked the rise of the far-right? We can also look at Japan whose economic and geopolitical power will be drastically weakened due to its ageing population. It failed to even address the problem while baulking at opening up, which is understandable in many ways when you look at how awful countries like Sweden have managed immigration.
Therefore, Hungary is only left with two options, increase the birth rate or increase immigration. Increasing the birth rate is probably more conducive to a nation than opening up its borders. However, as you pointed out, increasing the birth rate won’t mean much if your population is migrating to other countries (ex: see Africa’s brain drain).
Immigration can also be positive or negative depending on how a government goes about it. In Canada, increasing immigration is working because we have the options to screen immigrants before allowing them to come over. However, for Sweden, immigration has led the conservative parties in Sweden to win because the previous government fail to acknowledge how disastrous its immigration policy was.