The situation of the family support system
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The government allocated 4,300 billion Hungarian forints to family support systems, including:
Support for large families’ car purchases: 29,000 families received 73 billion forints in assistance.
Family home creation allowance: 200,000 families received 675 billion forints in support and 677 billion in preferential loans.
Home renovation support for child-rearing families: Approximately 300,000 families received 750 billion forints in assistance.
“Babaváró” (Baby Waiting) program: 250,000 families received 2,350 billion forints in loans and support.
Critics argue that the Fidesz government’s family support system fails to target the measures effectively, or if it does, it primarily benefits the upper echelons of society. In other words, those who don’t truly need it are more likely to take advantage of these benefits.
Access to family support is tied to a conditional system that few among the less affluent can meet.
According to the government’s interpretation, family policy is not meant to uplift the poor.
A large-scale, long-term study conducted partly with EU funding examines families with children, which is the target group of the support system. The research findings indicate that 50-60% of eligible families do not plan to take out loans within the family support framework.
The current family support system disproportionately rewards financially secure couples and the banks providing loans, while putting a significant burden on the state budget.
In practice, this means that we spend a lot of public funds on various benefits, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor.
The role of the family support system would be to improve the country’s demographic indicators. By 2030, the fertility rate needs to be raised to 2.1.
The logic behind family support is purely pro-natalist: encourage the birth of as many children as possible. If, through these support programs, even a slightly higher number of children are born (although the exact impact remains a question), then these programs are considered successful.
Demographers often say that measuring the short-term effects is very challenging. The actual impact can be assessed when complete fertility data is available (when the women included in the research reach the age of 45).
However, the current fertility data is not encouraging. In May, 11% fewer children were born in Hungary compared to the previous year, approaching a historical low. The total fertility rate, which provides a more accurate measure of fertility trends than the birth rate, is now 1.36, whereas it was 1.48 during the same period in 2023. It seems we are moving further away from the peak of 1.8 registered in September 2021 and drifting closer to the initial value of 1.25 measured in 2010.
This may be related to the fact that family support programs primarily influence the timing of childbearing rather than the ultimate number of children in a family. In practice, this means that if a conditional system encourages women to give birth at a younger age, it is more likely that the initially planned children will be born earlier, rather than an increase in the overall number of children.
The question arises: What purpose do these extremely costly support programs serve if there is no clear policy framework that unequivocally deems them successful? Why does the government promote them when the results, to put it mildly, are lackluster, while significantly burdening the state budget?