Birth numbers in Poland drop to 15 year low, despite expanded child benefit scheme

The number of births in Poland over the past year has dropped to a 15-year low, despite the government expanding its flagship child benefit programme in 2019. The scheme was launched with the aim of boosting births to address the country’s demographic problems.

Newly released official data show that in July this year 33,000 children were born, compared to 37,000 in the same month last year. Over the twelve months to July, there were 365,500 births in Poland – the lowest figure since 2005.

Meanwhile, the number of deaths in the same 12-month period reached 408,300. Poland’s demographic deficit – the gap between the death and birth numbers – has thus reached 43,000, notes economist Rafał Mundry.

When the government introduced its “500+” child-benefit programme – which gave a monthly payment of 500 zloty (€110) to families for each child from their second onwards – it presented it as a means to tackle Poland’s difficult demographic situation by boosting births. In relative terms, it is one of the most generous such policies in Europe.

Initially, the number of births (green line in the graph above) did rise after the launch of “500+” in spring 2016. But they have since fallen again, and are now below the level at which the programme began.

This is despite the government last year expanding the programme to provide money for the first child in every family (something previously only the poorest families had received).

Earlier this year, the government admitted for the first time that the scheme had not had the intended effect. The number of babies born in Poland “has not increased and will not increase” as a result of the policy, said Barbara Socha, the government’s spokesperson for demographic issues.

Poland’s fertility rate currently stands at 1.44 children per women, which marks a slight increase of 0.7% since 2019 but remains well below the replacement rate of 2.1 to sustain population levels, according to UN data. It is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

Earlier this year, official figures showed that Poland’s natural population decline reached its highest level since the Second World War in 2019, when 375,000 people were born and 410,000 people died, creating a deficit of 35,000.

Last year, a report on “500+” by the FOR think tank criticised the policy. As well as failing to have an impact on the birth rate, it argued, the programme has been unnecessarily costly by not employing a means-tested method to aid poorer families, and has also had the effect of encouraging 100,000 women to leave the job market.

Despite failing in its main stated aim, the policy has proved popular among the public. It is widely credited as a major factor in PiS’s continued popularity. The programme has also seen as having contributed to a decline in the number of Polish families living in poverty.

In 2019 Poland’s poverty rates all dropped significantly, with extreme poverty falling by over a fifth (marking a slight reverse in the increased rates recorded in 2018, but a continue a longer-term decline since 2014).

Last year was also the first in which the number of relatively poor children fell below 1 million, from 1.65 million in 2008. Meanwhile, the number of children in extreme poverty has reached its lowest point in at least a decade, 312,600, down from a peak of 715,100 just five years previously.

Main image credit: Adam Guz/KPRM/Flickr

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.