J13 - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; YouthReturn

The population ageing is the main population problem of Europe. Population development may influence the economy and the economy may retrospectively influence population development. The consequences of this process may appear with a delay of several decades and they may have an unfavourable influence on the functioning of the economy and the prosperity of individual European countries. In connection with this, the international migration is often brought up, mainly the question whether the migration can solve or at least lessen the ramifications connected with the decrease in the number of population itself and population ageing. The migration itself is rather wide and extensive and cannot be dwelled upon in great detail, ergo we pointed out some of the ground ideas in this article, especially those which are most commonly connected with the demographic migration.

The article is concerned with pro-natalist policies, examining empirically their effectiveness. There are proposed four hypotheses: continuous decline of the birth rate; adaptive model; natural-rate hypothesis; crowding-out hypothesis. Nine countries are tested: Germany, Italy, Sweden and France before the World War II and Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany during the communism. Best empirical results arise from the crowding-out hypothesis. Good results follow from the adaptive model and the continuous decline of birth rates. The natural-rate hypothesis has small explanatory power. Pro-natalist policies, according to this study, are not too effective.