Pro-child policies are good, but what about being pro-parent too?

States that want to encourage people to have more kids should think about making it easier to raise them.

- Stephen Bush

One of the things that forces a rich country to open its doors to immigrants is the need to find people to do work that its own population is unwilling or unable to do. And, increasingly in the developed world, one of the jobs that people are unwilling or unable to do is that of a parent.

Except for Israel, no country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has a birth rate above replacement rate 2.1 births per woman. Even countries like France and Hungary, which have spent large sums to encourage people to have bigger families, have not managed to get above this pivotal figure.

It is possible that Hungary's upward trajectory has not yet peaked and that its generous programme of financial incentives, in which families with more than three children pay little to no income tax, has turned around the country's long decline in fertility. But given that Hungary spends 5 per cent of its gross domestic product on "pro-childbirth" policies, you would hope it would have managed to hit a higher birth rate than 1.6. That is no better than Britain, whose government removed child benefit for households earning more than £60,000 (S$101,000) and refuses to pay anything additional for households having more than two children.

Some people insist that demographic decline is not a problem. There are three arguments I hear all the time whenever I raise this topic.