“If you don’t own a home, it’s very hard… renting is extremely expensive, especially with utilities on top. My partner and I tried to work it out. If we lived by ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. If we wanted to maintain our standard of living and provide everything for our child, it just wouldn’t be possible. By the third month, we’d already need to take out a loan and go into debt. That’s how it would go, which is why we live with my mother in her house.”¹

In 2018, a young woman from Dombóvár in southwestern Hungary spoke for many when she opened up about her life in the country under then-prime minister Viktor Orbán. Skyrocketing living costs and low wages in rural areas made cohabitation with family members often the only viable path to starting adult life and having children.

Curiously, a range of generous grants, benefits, and tax breaks was available to families with children and couples planning to start a family under the Orbán regime, particularly from 2015 onwards.

These measures belonged to a series of population policy initiatives aimed at triggering a baby boom in Hungary. However, experts raised concerns about their fairness, sustainability, and accessibility. Many key instruments, including tax credits and refunds, strongly favoured high-income married couples. Those who did not align with the regime’s preferred model of the ideal white Christian Hungarian nuclear family, such as non-heterosexual and non-married couples, as well as less well-off couples and families, were marginalised. The country’s Roma minority, who experience higher rates of poverty and exclusion, was disproportionately affected. Babylinked housing subsidies contributed to rising property prices and rents – pushing younger generations towards alternative housing arrangements.

Furthermore, even when young couples were able to take advantage of these financial incentives, this often triggered an ethical paradox.² While they used these schemes to realise plans they already had, many expressed moral unease about having children at a particular time to qualify for state support. As a result, family subsidies became a site of tension and moral negotiation among citizens.

But the most serious concern surrounding this policy direction – ostensibly taken in response to fears over demographic decline in Hungary – was its effect on women, specifically their reproductive autonomy, economic independence, and equality.

Historical roots of the demographic panic

Fears of depopulation have long shaped Hungarian demographic discourse, with experts and politicians repeatedly invoking the spectre of national decline. Although circumstances have changed over the centuries, these narratives have remained remarkably consistent. In modern Hungarian historiography, concerns about demographic decline are often traced back to the aftermath of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon (1920), which drastically redrew Hungary’s borders. Since then, politicians, journalists, and demographers have repeatedly sounded the alarm over national survival.

Fears of depopulation have long shaped Hungarian demographic discourse, with experts and politicians repeatedly invoking the spectre of national decline.

During the interwar, authoritarian Horthy regime, a maternalist framework came to dominate public discourse. From 1928 onwards, women with many children were awarded the Medal of Merit for Valiant Mothers, and comprehensive social policies were introduced to support the agrarian population, particularly large but impoverished families. However, these policies increasingly relied on the confiscation of so-called “Jewish wealth” from the late 1930s onward,³ while disqualifyIng people of Jewish origin from the welfare cooperatives that distributed assistance, giving them a distinctly exclusionary and discriminatory character. The loan-based schemes that were introduced, under which families were exempted from repaying state loans upon the birth of a fourth child, bear a striking resemblance to family policies introduced in the 2010s.

After World War II, a Moscow-backed communist regime was established in Hungary, yet the maternalist framework persisted. In the early 1950s, the state launched a strict anti-abortion campaign, tightening regulations to the point of near prohibition.⁴ At the same time, social benefits for mothers were expanded. Pronatalist discourse continued to draw on longstanding fears of depopulation, though its ideological foundation shifted: higher birth rates were now framed as essential to building the ideal communist society.

The third distinct phase of the twentieth century emerged in the 1970s, when the state socialist regime initiated another demographic campaign. Much like the pronatalist discourse of the interwar years, this approach linked population growth to broader social and economic prosperity. It primarily focused on financial support via a new “childcare allowance” (gyermekgondozási segély, GYES) in 1967. The GYES offered women the opportunity – but also subjected them to the implicit social pressure – to stay at home with their children for the first three years of their lives, supported by limited state compensation. Other measures included the development of healthcare infrastructure and conscious family planning, as well as the re-regulation of strict state committees to review applications for abortion.

Orbán’s illiberal contract with women

While there were sustained challenges to women’s reproductive rights and autonomy from conservative and religious actors following the fall of communism in 1989, it was only after 2010 that a distinctly neo-conservative reproductive regime took shape. In its early years, the emphasis was on material incentives – for instance, families with three or more children benefitted from significant tax reductions, signalling a shift in the country’s approach to social citizenship. The introduction of the Family Housing Subsidy scheme (Családi Otthonteremtési Kedvezmény, CSOK) in 2015 further strengthened the pronatalist direction of population policy by offering families with children financial assistance with buying a home. Beyond demographic goals, these initiatives also aimed to stimulate consumption and give a boost to the construction sector.

The year 2018 marked a further turning point. Following his third consecutive electoral victory, Orbán declared it the “Year of the Families” and, in 2019, launched the Family Protection Action Plan (Családvédelmi Akcióterv). This programme expanded financial incentives, including the “baby-expecting” loan (babaváró hitel), mortgage reductions tied to the birth of children, and lifetime income tax exemptions for mothers of four or more children. According to Orbán, having children is “the most personal public matter”, a framing that reinforces a maternalist narrative in which women are primarily defined through motherhood and provide a service to the state by bearing and raising citizens.

The illiberal “carefare regime”⁵ promoted paid, full-time motherhood as an alternative to participation in the labour market, presenting this arrangement as an attractive option for women. At the same time, it oversaw the privatisation of public services, including healthcare and education, implicitly relying on women’s reproductive labour as a low-cost substitute for state provision. For their part, working women were expected to perform both productive and reproductive labour to maximise state benefits. This process of “housewifisation” functioned as a distinctive – and ultimately largely ineffective – response to broader economic and social challenges.

A further feature of Orbán’s pronatalist drive was the tightening of access to abortion. In 2011, a clause was introduced into the Hungarian constitution that enshrined the protection of life from conception. While this did not result in the criminalisation of abortion, it set the tone for the years to come. Due to “sneaking restrictions” including the outlawing of medical abortion in 2012, the need for self-financing, and increasing bureaucratic and psychological pressure – exacerbated by the controversial “heartbeat decree” introduced in 2022 that obliges doctors to provide pregnant women seeking an abortion with “a clearly identifiable indication of fetal vital signs” before going ahead with a termination –, women under Orbán faced many barriers that made it very difficult to access the procedure.⁶

The illiberal “carefare regime” promoted paid, full-time motherhood as an alternative to participation in the labour market, presenting this arrangement as an attractive option for women.

Consequences of the campaign

Over the past sixteen years, enormous amounts of public money have been spent on the pronatalist ambitions of policymakers in Hungary. At times, family support reached around 5 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, the associated tax benefits have increased year on year.

Despite the money spent, the anticipated baby boom never really arrived, and demographic trends remained largely unchanged. According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office,⁷ in 1998, the number of live births in Hungary was 97,301. After Orbán’s return to power in 2010, birth rates lay at just over 90,000 and stagnated until 2013. This was followed by a brief increase between 2014 and 2017, with a high of just over 93,000 recorded in 2016.

Many of these births were not additional but rather brought forward from future years, echoing the short-term effects of pronatalist campaigns of the 1950s. Following the 2016 high, birth rates fell slightly and then remained relatively stable for a number of years before declining sharply from 2022 onwards. In 2025, Hungary recorded the lowest number of live births in its history, suggesting that the downward trend may be difficult to reverse, particularly if structural challenges remained unaddressed. These include the declining number of women of childbearing age and the continued emigration of young people to Western Europe in search of higher living standards and happier lives.

But while the influence of Orbán’s pronatalist policies on birth rates was ultimately negligible, their impact on women was significant, with increased risks of impoverishment, domestic and obstetric violence, economic dependency, inequality in employment, and the gradual tightening of reproductive rights and decision-making autonomy.

The clearest impact can be seen in the area of reproductive rights. The number of pregnancy terminations has decreased significantly, from approximately 40,000 in 2010 to just over 20,000 in 2024. However, this trend should not be interpreted as a direct result of tighter abortion regulations; it is more reasonably explained by factors such as increased contraceptive use and more conscious family planning, and it has continued independently of legal restrictions. Therefore, fewer women are seeking abortions, but access to the procedure has also become more difficult, particularly affecting young and low-income women, who are more likely to rely on abortion as a last resort for family planning.⁸

Meanwhile, the rate of caesarean sections rose from 38.46 per cent in 2015 to 41.59 per cent in 2024, which Hungarian women’s health campaigners consider to be one manifestation of widespread obstetric violence.⁹ Added to this is the fact that rural obstetric departments have been closing down due to the declining birth rate and the brain drain of medical personnel, while the lack of general practitioners and school nurses is noticeable in everyday life, causing worrying gaps in care.

Another illustration of the effect government policies have had on women’s ability to make life choices free from coercion was a dramatic spike in marriages, peaking in 2021.¹⁰ Within marriages, these policies reinforced traditional gender roles and women’s economic dependency, with higher earning men more able to take advantage of tax breaks without getting involved in child-rearing.

In relation to employment inequality, the (up to) three-year leave period associated with the GYES childcare allowance has generated tensions, not only between employers and employees but also among women themselves. Extended absences for family reasons – and even days off to care for sick children – are often poorly tolerated by employers. As a result, young women are often treated as ticking bombs that could go off at any time. As one woman puts it, “If you have already given birth, that is seen as a disadvantage, because young children may fall ill, and you are therefore undesirable. If you have not yet given birth, you are also undesirable.”¹¹ This reinforces structural disadvantages for women in the labour market.

In 2018, a representative study published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung explored the everyday realities and aspirations of Hungarian women.¹²

It highlighted a range of structural problems, including inadequate working conditions and low wages, a growing care crisis involving both elderly relatives and children, and the tension between demographic expectations placed on women and workplace demands that assume constant availability. In this context, material conditions dominated the discourse, while symbolic political struggles around gender equality and sexual harassment were largely secondary or absent. The analysis points to a grim reality: for many Hungarian women, having children has become an increasingly unaffordable enterprise rather than a realistic life choice.

The greatest challenge lies in caring for children already born, while simultaneously being confronted with repeated calls for higher birth rates. In practice, however, state concern often remains rhetorical, focused primarily on the unborn, both present and future. Couples and single parents who have already fulfilled the regime’s pronatalist expectations are frequently left without sufficient support. At the same time, most women continue to express a desire for children but identify the workplace and a toxic work culture as significant obstacles to achieving a fulfilling life.

Reality knocks at the door

Viktor Orbán relied on various forms of symbolic pressure and political messaging to obscure the structural problems affecting women. Yet, in the spring of 2026, reality came to confront the regime directly.

Following the parliamentary elections in April, centre-right party TISZA gained a landslide victory, and the Orbán regime collapsed. The antiliberal project ultimately failed. It was primarily residents of smaller settlements and towns, many with vocational training or high school diplomas as their highest level of education, who turned against Orbán’s so-called System of National Cooperation (Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere, NER), the ideological and political framework that turned Hungary into an illiberal regime. Healthcare workers, teachers, and civil servants emerged as the clear losers of a corrupt system marked by economic stagnation and the constant emotional strain of state-driven propaganda.

The Hungarian case illustrates a broader tension between demographic policy, gender inequality, and social welfare.

Viktor Orbán and his hegemonic party Fidesz failed to address the everyday realities facing Hungarians. The illiberal “carefare” regime prioritised population growth over quality of life, obscuring more pressing social concerns. By naturalising reproduction as a default aspiration, this discourse reinforced anxieties about national decline and limited the scope of public debate. While Orbán waged symbolic campaigns against pseudo-enemies, the newly elected prime minister Péter Magyar has pledged to refocus on economic policy and to rebuild trust with European allies. For many Hungarian women, such a shift could bring long-awaited relief, particularly if political actors retreat from attempts to regulate their bodies and their private lives.

Reorienting demographic thinking

The Hungarian case illustrates a broader tension between demographic policy, gender inequality, and social welfare. One possible solution in the post-illiberal era is to reorientate demographic thinking from an exclusive focus on increasing birth rates towards improving life expectancy, health, and overall quality of life, and for more equal, democratic approaches to care.

The demographic future proposed by TISZA focuses primarily on diaspora return. The party has announced plans to encourage the return of Hungarians living abroad, many of whom left the country due to economic insecurity and fearmongering politics. A second key element of its electoral programme is improving life expectancy. Since 1981, deaths have consistently outnumbered live births, with annual numbers remaining around 130,000 since 2010. Women also continue to die in slightly higher numbers than men each year. While the programme references the “rehumanisation” of obstetric care and improved access to IVF treatment, it pays comparatively little attention to the persistent demographic pressure placed on women to give birth, which many consider to be revealing of the new government’s stance on these issues.

Compared to the demographic paradigms of previous decades, a policy focus on diaspora return and increased life expectancy would indeed represent a meaningful shift in both rhetoric and practice. By moving away from an exclusive fixation on fertility rates and the regulation of women’s reproductive choices, such an approach could reframe demographic policy around lived lives rather than abstract population targets. Instead of attempting to reverse what may be an irreversible demographic trend, policy and resources should be directed towards improving the wellbeing of those already living. The success of future policies remains an open question, but it certainly points to a more humane horizon for demographic policy.

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1. Anikó Gregor & Eszter Kováts (2018). Nőügyek 2018: társadalmi problémák és megoldási stratégiák: a kutatási eredmények összefoglalója. Budapest: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Available at <https://collections.fes.de/publikationen/ident/fes/14461>. Author’s translation. ↩︎
2. Szandra Kramarics (2025). “The marketization of family planning: the role of banks as policy actors in Hungarian reproductive policies”. Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, Vol. 11(2), pp. 26–45. Available at <https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v11i2.1368>. ↩︎
3. Dorottya Szikra (2009). “Social Policy and Anti-Semitic Exclusion before and during World War II in Hungary. The Case of the Productive Social Policy”, in Gisela Hauss & Dagmar Schulte (eds). Amid Social Contradictions: Towards a History of Social Work in Europe. Opladen & Farmington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Available at <https://bit.ly/3QBmcU7>. ↩︎
4. Andrea Pető & Fanni Svégel (2024). “Nationalism, Pronatalism, and the Guild of Gynecology: The Complex Legacy of Abortion Regulation in Hungary”. Central European History, Vol. 57(4), pp. 499-516. Available at <https://doi:10.1017/S0008938924000037>. ↩︎
5. Eva Fodor (2022). The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary. Cham: Palgrave Pivot. Available at <https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51949>. ↩︎
6. Andrea Pető & Fanni Svégel (2024). ↩︎
7. Hungarian Central Statistical Office (n.d.). “22.1.1.6. Live births, total fertility rate”. Last accessed: 27 April 2026. Available at <https://bit.ly/4tCP4tG>. ↩︎
8. Fanni Dés & Krisztina Les (2024). “Azt a füzetet nem szabadna mutogatni” Nők élményei Magyarországon az abortuszhoz való hozzáférés gyakorlatáról. Budapest: Patent Egyesület. Available at <https://bit.ly/4uE6uH8>. ↩︎
9. Andrea Pető & Zsuzsanna Balázs (2026). Viktor Orbán’s Affairs with Women: The Illiberal Playbook: Gender, Power, and Control. Budapest: CEEOL Press. ↩︎
10. Eurostat (2026). “Marriage and divorce statistics”. Data extracted in March 2026. Available at <https://bit.ly/4dQqLC9>. ↩︎
11. Anikó Gregor & Eszter Kováts (2018). ↩︎
12. Ibid. ↩︎