Bartosz Marczuk: Give Families a 100,000-Zloty Housing Voucher for Each Child

Poland’s fertility rate may have reached a floor, but that floor remains exceptionally low. The rate has stopped falling at 1.07 children per woman of reproductive age, while the number of births has stayed around 240,000 over the past year.

Bartosz Marczuk, a deputy family minister in Law and Justice governments, says forecasts remain difficult, but some projections put the rate at about 1.15 this year. He points to South Korea, where fertility rose slightly from 0.75 to 0.8 after various public policies were introduced.

Marczuk argues that people generally want more children than they have, but life and financial circumstances often make that difficult. Housing costs, he says, are one of the pressures that family policy should address directly.

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Let us grant a housing voucher worth 100,000 zlotys for the birth of a child.

His proposal is a 100,000-zloty housing voucher for the birth of a child. Rather than sending families collectively to banks for mortgage loans, the state would give them designated funds that could be used as a home down payment, for renovations or to buy construction materials.

The proposal is presented as a way to reduce the material barriers facing families. Marczuk’s comments link Poland’s demographic challenge to the practical cost of housing and household finances.

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For the first time, we would not collectively send people to banks for a mortgage, but would give them designated money they could use for a down payment when buying a home, renovating a property or purchasing building materials at a store.