Population Explosion

Over the last couple of decades Poland had one of the lowest birth rates in Europe where only Czech, Lithuanian and Romanian women had a lower fertility rate. With an aging population prospects of continuing growth looked dim especially in the workforce being large enough to fulfill the demands of employers. 

Polish couples got to work making more babies partially due to a government program giving 500 zloty per month to families with children. Nearly PLN 19 billion ($5 billion) has been paid out for nearly four million children under the government's flagship 500+ family benefit program, according to the Polish family minister.  
 
Under the scheme, the government gives parents PLN 500 a month for each child in low-income families, and for second and subsequent children in all other families. About 4 million children under the age of 18 have benefited from the government program since it was implemented last April

Poland had an 11% year to year hike in number of births in July.  Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (DGP) reports 35,000 new born babies citing the latest data by stats office GUS.

January-July year to year births increased 9% to 235,000. By the end of the year births are expected to exceed 400,000 if the trend is maintained .

Factors that seem to improved the birthrate include a better economic situation, shrinking unemployment, rising wages, a high number of women aged 29-34 and the positive impact of the government's family support scheme 500+.

Per-capita disposable income of Polish households rose at a moderate pace in the case of 500+ beneficiaries and wealth gap narrowing. 

Babies cost money

EU birthrates have hovered near zero. Poland itself had a post-communist low birth rate on top of thousands going to the U.K. to find high paying jobs. The government in Poland started programs to encourage population growth. It worked!





From thenews.pl:

More and more children are being born in Poland, which means that next year the government will spend around 10 million zlotys more than in 2006 on one time payments to families with new borns. In the first half of this year, 227.000 children were born. Throughout the whole of 2006 only 374.000 of them were born – a demographic record in Poland. The government introduced the payments to families, around 350 dollars, as part of its `pro-family' policies to encourage Poles to have more children.

Previous posts on the subject:

http://polishtoledo.blogspot.com/2007/03/go-forth-and-multiply-damn-it.html#links

http://polishtoledo.blogspot.com/2007/06/polish-baby-boom-strains-hospitals.html#links

http://polishtoledo.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-children-coming-soon.html#links