The government has been committed to family-friendly policy since 2010.Continue reading
The 5th Budapest Demographic Summit, the largest European conference on population policy, set off on Thursday. Ahead of the event, Hungarian news portal Mandiner asked Ágnes Hornung, State Secretary for Family Policy, about current trends and future expectations.
Reflecting on the figure that 75 percent of children born now are coming from married couples, the State Secretary stressed that the institution of marriage is demographically important because statistics show that it is much more likely to produce children than other types of relationships. “It provides both women and men with a set of values which means much greater stability.
The pro-family turn is made up of an ideological and a material approach, and although we certainly talk a lot about the material, the ideological turn is just as important.
What is needed is a predictable framework which in itself is a sustaining force and helps to create stability and security for people in the family”, Ágnes Hornung pointed out.
At the same time, fertility rates in Hungary have fallen slightly compared to the record figures for 2021. This trend may have been contributed to by the unfavorable geopolitical and economic situation, that may discourage young people from having children. Ágnes Hornung emphasized however, that the fact that we have seen the biggest increase in willingness to have children in Europe over the past 12 years is a cause for optimism.
Looking at family policy measures over the past hundred years, it is clear that when positive decisions were taken, the indicator increased, but when negative policy measures were taken, the indicator immediately decreased.
When Prime Minister Viktor Orbán talks about the government’s ambition to introduce new family policy measures every year, he is precisely aiming to increase the indicator further”, the State Secretary said of the fertility rates. She added that the government believes that with predictable family policies and family-friendly thinking they can achieve a renewed increase in the fertility rate.
Asked whether a fertility rate of 2.1 is a realistic target, Ágnes Hornung reminded that this is the level at which a population can reproduce itself and above which it can grow. “Today, all European countries are below this level, but looking at the broader picture, we see that the developed world is typically around 1.0, or even below it; the only countries with significant growth are in Africa and possibly some Asian countries.
In all cases, we stress that having children is a sovereign decision for families to make, but it is our task to improve their opportunities across a broad spectrum of policies and to contribute to stopping the population of the Hungarian nation from declining further”,
she stressed.
Featured photo via Pixabay
