Nations must work to reduce abortions, along with Financial Incentives
Gdzie sa Te dzieci? = Where are these children?
A drastic decline in birth rates is becoming commonplace in industrialized societies worldwide. We earlier reported that the United States has a fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman, far below the 2.1 births necessary to equalize the deaths per birth ratio to break even.
Poland also has a fertility problem, even worse than America. Studies have shown the Poles have a fertility rate of 1.16%. The crisis in Poland means that more will die than be born in the Slavic country. Following the example of Hungary, Poland has instituted a law signed by their new president, providing financial incentives for women to have more children.
In 2010, the newly elected Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, recognizing the population decline in Hungary, proposed the Fundamental Law, strengthening Hungary’s Christian character and pledged to protect traditional marriage and the family as the basis of the nation’s survival.
Hungary’s law provides tax credits for women having one child and increases with each additional child. The tax credit would become permanent for Hungarian women with three or more children. Initially, the financial considerations had an impact on fertility in Hungary. As years passed, the enthusiasm for having children precipitously fell in Hungary. In 2024, birth rates in Hungary were only 1.38.
Instead of increasing the birth rate over the years, Hungary is experiencing the same problem it sought to solve in the first place. Critics claim Hungary’s less-than-prosperous economy is one of the biggest hurdles to having larger families. Hungarian women are career-minded and enter the workforce because the prices in Hungary are higher and salaries lower than those in their neighbor Germany.
Another factor contributing to the decline in births in Hungary is the number of abortions performed. An average of 24,000 abortions were performed, and that is a considerable number of lives ended, which could increase the population in Hungary.
We have just learned that the new President of Poland is planning a policy similar to Hungary’s. President Karol Nawrocki has signed a law eliminating personal income tax (PIT) for families raising two or more children. The law is intended to help Polish families “increase household income and boost economic activity.” During the signing of the bill, Nawrocki declared, “The family is the heart of the nation and must also be the center of the economy.”
Will the new law help increase Poland’s population? If you compare it with Hungary, which saw a decline after its laws were enacted, Poland might face the same challenges. One thing going in Poland’s favor is a 3.3% GDP growth in 2025, surpassing many European Union countries.
What is not going in Poland’s favor is the larger number of abortions than in Hungary. The average number of abortions in Poland is 93,000. The same report has a tragic number of worldwide abortions, which is 53 million.
Polish leaders should be lauded for providing an environment beneficial to families and the birth of new children. They should also observe the Hungarian experiment, which shows that financial incentives are insufficient to increase birth rates independently. What is needed to be added to the formula is a steady decrease in the number of children being killed in the womb.
China, another pro-abortion country, is refashioning its subsidies to encourage women to give birth because it, too, is facing a fertility crisis. Instead of paying their employers, China now has a policy to pay the women directly.
If all of these countries, including our own, want to combat fertility rates, they must seriously consider curbing abortion as part of the plan. Until then, financial considerations only address part of the problem they seek to solve.