Just like Trump, Hungarian leader Orban wants more babies for his country, offering big incentives

Earlier this year, Donald Trump announced that he would like Americans to have more babies and pushed forward ways to help that happen. These include expanding access to invitro fertilization and increasing spending in areas with higher marriage and birth rates.

But over the Atlantic, Victor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, presented an audacious new idea. He wants to introduce a lifetime income tax exemption for all women who have two or more babies.

Orban stated on X, “2025 is the year of the breakthrough! We are launching the largest tax reduction program in Europe. We are introducing full, lifelong income tax exemption for mothers with two and three children. There’s nothing like this in the whole world!

Hungary’s cost of living is high, so the government needs to subsidize families,” says Ben Habib, chairman of the Great British Political Action Committee and former co-deputy leader of Reform UK. “It makes it easier for mothers to stay home.”

Orban’s proposal seems to be about more than catching votes. Rather, the focus looks like a way to fix the country’s declining population, which has fallen to 9.9 million this year, down from 10.7 million in 1980, according to data from Macro Trends. The drop is primarily due to the collapse in Hungary’s birth rate. To sustain the population level, the birth rate needs to be at least two births per woman, experts say. But that hasn’t happened since 1979, according to World Bank data. The birth rate for 2023 was 1.5 children per woman.

A declining population is a natural development as countries get richer, says Win Thin, global head of markets strategy at financial company Brown Brothers Harriman. “As economies grow and more mature, the birth rates decline,” he says

And that’s where Orban’s ideas kick in, because giving out money can help increase the birth rate. “If there is no biological cause to the falling birth rate, you can reverse it, but you need to have incentives,” says Robert Wright, professor of economics at Central Michigan University.

Hungary already has scaled subsidies for families with children. For instance, two-parent families with one child get 12,200 Hungarian Forints ($32) per month for that child, whereas couples with three or more children receive 16,000 ($41.60) forints per child per month, according to the Hungarian government. Single parents and those with children with disabilities or long-term illnesses get more money. There are other benefits, including interest-free loans for younger women.