Birth rate to pick up in major Polish cities: demographer
PR dla Zagranicy
Alicja Baczyńska
19.02.2018 12:15
Large cities in Poland may expect to see a rise in birth rates but the trend will not offset the overall fall in the population in the long term, demographer Professor Piotr Szukalski from the University of Łódź has said.
Photo: Pixabay/amyelizabethquinn
The birth rate in the country has been picking up in the past “three, four years” after figures slumped following the global financial crisis in 2008, Szukalski said.
In 2016, the birth rate in major Polish cities ranged between 1.17 per 1,000 people in Olsztyn, northeast Poland, through 1.41 in Warsaw to 1.51 in the coastal city of Gdańsk, according to the Central Statistics Office (GUS).
Szukalski added, however, that “the long-term birth rate will remain below the replacement level, while the inflow of people to these cities is too low to offset the insufficient number of births.”
In 2016, Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) launched its "500 plus" programme, a child benefit initiative aimed at raising Poland’s birthrate.
The programme provides monthly handouts of PLN 500 (EUR 112) for every household's second and subsequent child. (aba/pk)
Source: PAP