Bonuses for families have done nothing to fix a baby bust caused by post-communist Europe’s relationships crisis
I
n 2015, I found myself advising Poland’s president on the nation’s demographic woes: the country’s fertility rate had stalled at 1.3 children per woman, among the lowest in Europe. I thought I understood the problem. Most Polish couples wanted to have two kids but settled for one. The culprits, I believed, were predictable: precarious jobs, not enough childcare, apartment prices out of reach. At 27, flush with the confidence that comes from being both right and young, I sparred with politicians and policymakers twice my age, usually men, who insisted that women like me would reproduce if only the state threw enough cash into the cradle.
We were all, it turned out, fighting the wrong battle. In the decade since then, unemployment in Poland has sunk to one of the lowest in the EU. Incomes have more than doubled. Nursery and childcare places are multiplying. The government now channels almost 8% of the national budget into cash transfers known as the “800 Plus” programme, so called because the state pays families 800 zlotys every month, per dependant child.
And yet, over the same time period, the population has shrunk by 1.5 million. A million new one-person households have materialised in the demographic ledger, quiet entries in a changing social contract. In 2024, Poland’s fertility rate collapsed to 1.1 – meaning it ranks among the world’s least fertile countries, beside war-scarred Ukraine. This year, it is poised to fall further, to 1.05.
