Substantial pro-family policies in Hungary are bearing real fruit, according to Katalin Novak, Hungary’s Minister of State for Family and Youth Affairs.

She spoke at two events in Dublin last week and described the positive demographic changes that has occurred in Hungary in the past decade after a radical change in Government policies.

The country’s population had been in decline since 1981, with the fertility rate plunging to a mere 1.23 in 2011. This was accompanied by declining rates of marriage and huge numbers of abortions.

Since then, successive conservative Governments have implemented a raft of initiatives to help young couples have as many children as they would like, and when they would like to have them. The fertility rate is currently 1.5, still far below the replacement rate of 2.1. It still remains to be seen what effect Hungarian policies will have over the medium to long-term.

Minister Novak said that in Hungary now there is national agreement that supporting families and money spent on the birth of new children is the best investment. She also told those present that there has been a twenty percent increase in the desire to have children, the number of marriages is at a forty-year high, and both abortions and divorces have dropped.