Pronatalist policy has now run long enough to be judged against experience. The record is not empty. Governments have helped parents, shifted the timing of births, and sometimes lifted fertility. None of the wealthy countries most committed to family policy has secured a durable return to replacement. The important question is what their partial successes reveal.
France built the oldest broad system. Family allowances, tax treatment, paid leave, and publicly supported childcare made the cost of children a continuing public concern rather than a private emergency. For years France maintained one of Europe’s highest fertility rates. That was a real achievement. Its TFR nevertheless fell from 2.02 in 2010 to 1.56 in 2025, the lowest French level since the end of the First World War. In 2025 deaths exceeded births for the first time since the Second World War.
The French case does not show that family support failed. Without it, fertility might have been lower. It shows that a good insurance system can hold up one part of the structure while marriage, desired family size, age at first birth, and the culture around parenthood continue to move.
Nordic countries reached a similar frontier by another route. They developed long paid leaves, extensive childcare, and high maternal employment. For a time, the model seemed to resolve the conflict between women’s work and children. Fertility later declined across the region despite those institutions. Norway’s TFR fell to 1.40 in 2023 before a recent increase. Finland reached 1.25 in 2024. A bridge between work and care matters, but even a well-built bridge cannot decide where a life is going.
Hungary’s wager
Hungary has made family formation a central political project. Its policies include subsidized loans whose repayment falls with additional children, housing support, and large tax exemptions for mothers. Family spending exceeds 3 percent of GDP by the OECD’s measure. The TFR rose from about 1.23 in 2011 to 1.59 in 2021.
The rise deserves attention because it was large enough to matter and persisted longer than a single-year bonus. It also did not reach replacement, and the rate fell after 2021. Some Hungarian programs reward married, employed households with enough income to borrow, which can leave poorer or unmarried parents outside the most generous support. A policy may strengthen a desired family form while failing to reach the adults least able to begin one.
Hungary’s central insight remains sound: a government reveals its priorities through taxes and credit, and a society that subsidizes almost everything except family formation should not be surprised by the result. Its experience also establishes the price of moving the rate by a few tenths. Durable renewal will require the aspiration behind the policy to become more widely shared than the benefit.
East Asia after the fall
South Korea has spent heavily against the lowest fertility in the world. Since its first Basic Plan for Low Fertility and Aging Society in 2006, the country has expanded childcare, parental leave, housing support, and payments. Individual reforms have had measurable effects. A 2013 childcare subsidy increased pregnancies among affected women, and higher leave benefits have increased the probability of birth for eligible workers. Yet the national TFR was 0.75 in 2024.
The contradiction is only apparent. A useful program can help thousands of families and remain too small for the surrounding system. Korean parents still confront long work hours, expensive housing around desirable jobs, and an education race that turns each child into a major project. Marriage remains closely tied to births. The policy package reaches parents after much of the difficulty of becoming parents has already done its work.
Japan began earlier and moved incrementally. It expanded childcare places, preschool support, leave, and child allowances under successive national plans. Waiting lists fell. Fathers gained formal leave rights that few initially used for long. Fertility still settled near its historic low, while the number of women in prime childbearing ages kept shrinking. Japan illustrates negative momentum in administrative form: each improvement applies to a smaller pool of possible mothers.
China made the sharpest reversal in official purpose. The government went from punishing unauthorized births to permitting two children, then three, and offering local childcare and housing benefits. The cultural and institutional machinery did not turn with the decree. In 2025 China recorded 7.92 million births, down 17 percent from the previous year, and 11.31 million deaths. Young adults raised as only children now face the care of parents and grandparents while considering the cost of children of their own.
These experiments do not support despair. They support proportion. Benefits can recover births at the edge; care infrastructure can make parenthood less punishing; a public commitment can tell families they are wanted. Reversal becomes plausible when those measures reinforce early family formation and a culture that admires motherhood and fatherhood. A benefits office cannot carry that larger change by itself.
Citations
- Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, “Bilan démographique 2025”, 2026.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Fertility trends across the OECD”, 2024.
- Statistics Finland, “Total fertility rate fell to an all-time low in 2024”, 2025.
- Hungarian Central Statistical Office, “Live births, total fertility rate”.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Economic Surveys: Hungary 2026, 2026.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Korea’s Unborn Future, 2024.
- Statistics Korea, Birth Statistics in 2024, 2025.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Economic Surveys: Japan 2024, 2024.
- National Bureau of Statistics of China, Statistical Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development, 2026.