Giving mothers a so-called ‘birth bonus’ for every child, as distinct from giving tax relief to families has encouraged couples in Poland to have more children, a conference of Catholic politicians has been told.

At the meeting in Rome last week, the former Polish Minister for Education Roman Giertych said that Poland had experienced a slight increase in its birth rate since 2003.

This welcome trend, he argued, was a result of a policy to give mothers a “birth bonus” for each child, a policy introduced by his League of Polish Families Party in 2005.

The party also introduced an improved tax relief for families in 2007.

Mr Giertych claimed that the Polish birth rate “started to improve 9 months after the “birth bonus” was passed into law.

Figures supplied by Mr Giertych showed that Poland’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is the average number of children born per woman aged 15-49, had hit 1.22 by 2003 but this had improved to 1.44 by 2009.

For a population to remain stable, a country’s TFR must be 2.1 children per woman aged 15-49.

Mr Giertych said that, had this continued, it would not have been long before Poland’s population had halved.

However in the last few years, he said, Poland’s birth rate was rising slowly, with an increase in the number of births of more than 120,000 per year

By 2009, the figures showed that the country’s TFR had increased to nearly 1.4. Although this was still some distance from replacement rate, Mr Giertych said that it was a marked improvement.

The increased birth rate, he said, showed that people did respond to pro-family legislation.