In a development so shocking it nearly sobered me up, a single country has apparently cracked the code to reversing the demographic death spiral. I refer, of course, to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán's government has been plying its citizens with enough tax breaks, housing subsidies, and nationalist rhetoric to make even the most sterile among us consider procreation. And the result? Birth rates have actually ticked upwards. For a moment, let us put aside the visceral horror of taking policy advice from a man who looks like a dyspeptic badger in a suit. The numbers do not lie: Hungary's fertility rate has risen from 1.2 children per woman (a demographic coffin nail) to 1.5. Still below replacement, yes, but a staggering reversal of fortune for a nation that was rapidly becoming a retirement home with a flag.
What is the secret? Money, of course. The Hungarian state now offers vast loans to young couples, which are quietly forgiven if they produce offspring. It is the ultimate pay-to-play scheme: have a baby, cancel your debt. Add in generous maternity leave, free childcare, and a tax system that rewards fecundity, and you have a recipe for a baby boomlet. But here is the rub: the policy is steered almost exclusively at married, heterosexual couples. Single parents, same-sex couples, the childfree by choice? They can go hang. This is not a universal pro-natalist policy; it is a state-sponsored campaign for traditional family values, complete with a side order of xenophobia (immigration being the other, more demonised solution to demographic decline).
Naturally, the British commentariat has reacted with the predictable blend of snobbery and despair. “We cannot merely bribe people into parenthood!” they cry, while simultaneously voting to slash child benefit and close Sure Start centres. The British approach to falling birth rates has been to ignore it, then panic, then blame millennials for spending their money on avocado toast instead of school fees. Meanwhile, Hungary has shown that a government can, with sufficient cash and coercion, persuade its citizens to breed. Whether you view this as a triumph of social engineering or a dystopian birth lottery depends entirely on your tolerance for state interference in the most intimate of human decisions.
But here is the real absurdity: the very factors that make Hungary's policy “work” are the ones that would make it politically toxic in the UK. Imagine the outrage if the British government offered to write off student loans for new parents. The Daily Mail would run headlines about “Feckless graduates spawning for profit.” The left would decry it as a bribe to the middle class. And yet, the alternative is watching the population dwindle until the country is run by robots and pensioners. Perhaps we should swallow our pride and learn from a country whose prime minister once described multiculturalism as “evil.” Or perhaps we should continue to do absolutely nothing, which is the British way.
In the end, Hungary's experiment suggests that birth rates are not purely a matter of economics but of existential outlook. If you convince people that their nation has a future, that the state will support them, and that having children is both a patriotic duty and a financial no-brainer, they will oblige. But if you treat parenthood as a lifestyle choice, burden it with crushing costs, and wrap it in a society that venerates career over family, you get the demographic winter we currently enjoy. So raise a glass (of gin, preferably) to Hungary: the country that reminded us that you can, in fact, bribe people into existence. The rest of us will carry on pretending that market forces will somehow sort it out, even as we shuffle toward extinction with a polite British shrug.
