Hungary’s Parliament passed a law December 15 defining the family as having a woman as the mother and a man as the father, effectively banning adoptions by same-sex couples and complicating adoptions by single people.
The change is the latest of several to be made in recent years in what the government has said are attempts to preserve Hungary’s Christian identity and to boost its plummeting birth rates.
“If we give up on our Christianity, then we will lose our own identity, as Hungarians, as Europeans,” Katalin Novák, Hungary’s Minister of State for Family Affairs, told CNA last December.
Ms Novák told CNA in 2019 that Hungary’s leaders were concerned with the country’s future due to a plummeting birth rate, which is 1.48, well below replacement level at 2.1 children per woman.
“We have a demographic challenge ahead of us,” Ms Novák said.
While some countries may rely on immigration, Hungary is trying to reverse the trend with a two-pronged approach: financial incentives for families to have more children, and promoting a culture that is pro-life and welcoming of large families, she added.
In that vein, the Hungarian government started offering financial incentives for couples in the country to marry and have children, including subsidised loans to those who marry before the bride’s 41st birthday.
Incentives to have children are built into the loan. One-third of it can be forgiven if the married couple has two children, and the entire loan can be forgiven if they have three children. Women with four or more children will be exempted from income tax for life. Families with at least three children are eligible for a grant to purchase a car that seats seven or more people.
Hungary claims the policies are working, as its central statistics office recently reported a 20% increase in marriages in 2019.
But the bump in fertility is yet to be seen, and other European countries, such as France and Germany, that have attempted to increase fertility through government subsidies have not seen a significant increase in birth rates.