Extended maternity/paternity leave (especially in Sweden), child benefits (especially Poland), tax exemptions (e.g Hungarian income tax), subsidised or free childcare and more.
Parental leave in Sweden is 80% of your salary and maxes out at 2500 a month for both partners... In Germany it maxes out at 1800. These aren't incentives since you'd be LOSING money by taking parental leave...
> child benefits
120-180 EUR a month per child doesn't even cover half the costs of a child.
The base case is to have no parental leave, not 100% of your current salary.
Historically that was the default when people had very positive fertility. In Israel & the US where fertility is higher there's even less generous setups than Sweden & Germany.
I suspect if you give people enough money they'll probably start having kids, but it's a very high number. Hungary is currently spending 5% of its GDP on fertility policies with little success [1]. Last year Poland's increase in its child benefit program alone cost 0.7-0.8% of GDP [2].
Well most people are struggling as it is, so obviously the prospect of increasing your responsibilities and also reducing your income doesn't seem worth it...
If governments were serious about falling birth rates they would invest in their people and give them reasons to have kids rather than saying "f- you" and just importing the workforce from poor countries instead.
