Hungarian women are asked to have more kids

BERLIN — Faced with a plummeting population, rising labor shortages and widespread emigration, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has long taken an unconventional approach to increasing the size and productivity of Hungary’s workforce.

He offered university scholarships only to those who promised to stay in Hungary. He gave citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living beyond the borders. And late last year, he increased the amount of overtime employers can demand of workers — to 400 hours a year.

But Sunday, Orban announced one of his most ambitious plans yet: Any Hungarian woman with four or more children will no longer pay income tax.

Anything to avoid immigration.

“We are living in times when fewer and fewer children are being born throughout Europe. People in the West are responding to this with immigration,” Orban said in a speech Sunday. “Hungarians see this in a different light. We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children.”

No country in the European Union has a fertility rate high enough to replenish its population without immigration — but Hungary, with about 1.5 children per woman, is among the most sluggish. It also is among the most reluctant to accept foreign workers to help plug the gaps.

Even in the Czech Republic and Poland, where anti-immigrant sentiment also runs high, governments are planning to admit, or have already admitted, workers from across Asia.

But Orban, a far-right leader, has said he does not want the color of Hungarians to be “mixed with those of others.”

Instead of encouraging immigration, Orban said Sunday that in addition to eliminating taxes for mothers with four or more children, he would reduce mortgage and car payments for parents; introduce new loans for families; allow grandparents to share maternity leave; and increase day care places.

The measures constitute “a regulation of women’s bodies,” said Andrea Peto, a gender studies professor at Central European University, a college in Budapest, Hungary. “Their bodies are being used as a resource for national development.”