Is it working? It’s been six years.
Or is it feel good populist hand waving bullshit stymied by corruption and incompetence?
Hungary's fertility rate was 1.2-1.3 from 2000 to 2011, and then jumped to ~1.5 [1]. Whether that is because of this policy is up for debate.
But that doesn't matter - I responded to your claim that they don't actually care about birthrate, because they don't fund families. But they do fund families, hinting that they probably do care about the birthrate, regardless of if their efforts are successful.
It takes very motivated thinking to say that, because a solution doesn't work, those that tried the solution don't care about the problem.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/HUN/hun...
It's possible politicians in Hungary both care about low birth rates, are doing something that has an effect, yet have other motives they give a higher priority.
Why only tax breaks? That won't help if the poor already pay little or nothing in taxes and still lack childcare.
> Why only tax breaks?
It's not only tax breaks - the loans are government loans (up to $36,000) that get fully forgiven after 3 children are equivalent to a cash payment.
And the poor pay 18% tax [1], so they would also benefit from a tax break. Though the poor aren't the only target of that program, so even if they get less help from it, it doesn't follow that politicians don't care about birthrates.
> It's possible politicians in Hungary both care about low birth rates, are doing something that has an effect, yet have other motives they give a higher priority.
I mean, what am I supposed to say to this? First of all, we're not talking just about politicians - voters seemingly care about this, and are getting what they want, at least partly. As for the hearts of politicians - who knows? Maybe? We're getting into unfalsifiable territory here. At a minimum, the politicians themselves are Hungarians - presumably they care about the survival of their people, at least some of them, at least a little? At the very least the initial post's simplistic they-don't-care-because-they-don't-fund-it logic has been disproven, at least for Hungary.