[niemandhier]

There is the idea floating around in Europe, to nullify people’s student debts if they have children.

So two kids during university would mean even the measly amount you have to pay back for an European subsided degree would be gone.

I do hope that will be put into effect.

I also believe that this will be better for gender equality than all the other measures taken so far.

I was in too many meetings, where the CV of a young woman was critically evaluated for her propensity to get pregnant as soon as the probationary period was over.

[hobo_mark]

What are these European student debts you speak of, outside of the UK (which emphatically does not want to be considered part of Europe)?

[niemandhier]

In Germany the government pays your university time. You get about 800€ per month for housing and basic needs. At least if your family is not too well off.

50% of this have to be paid back, free of interest and capped at 10k€. That is not much, but keep in mind that we earn much less than Americans and have much higher taxes.

[magicalhippo]

Similar in Norway. Except you have to pass exams to get part of it written off, if not you have to pay back 100%.

[em-bee]

but this is support for living expenses, not tuition. if you are frugal you can get by not spending all of it. that's what i did. when it was time to pay, i was able to pay off all of it at once which afforded me another discount.

[Barrin92]

Hungary spent 5%(!) of its GDP on direct child benefits and instituted a lifelong tax exemption for women with 3 or more children and the birth rate rose by... ~0.15 for a few years and then dropped again.

For comparison I assume you're German given the username, here this would amount to 300 billion per year, which is about 100x what the government spends on BAföG (the mentioned federal student aid). I genuinely wonder how much countries will have to spend until people realize that this has quite literally nothing to do with money.

[fc417fc802]

I expect it has to do with money but is much more complicated than simply allocating a small yearly amount. By way of related analogy consider housing. If you provide a subsidy but the market is primarily constrained by an inelastic supply then all you will accomplish is raising rents. I assume that there are many such nuanced factors that all contribute to the birth rate.

[inglor_cz]

Hungary might also have a problem with too many young Hungarian women living abroad. It is hard to raise fertility if your locally present fertile population has already tanked.

[pjc50]

> was in too many meetings, where the CV of a young woman was critically evaluated for her propensity to get pregnant as soon as the probationary period was over

When was this? In much of Europe that's been illegal employment discrimination for decades. But I suppose employers are less worried if they can be confident that it's unlikely that any of their employees will have children.

[joe_mamba]

>When was this? In much of Europe that's been illegal employment discrimination for decades.

Happens all the time in Austria. If you're a woman in your mid 20s to mid 30s, and employer will assume you'll get pregnant soon and go on childcare leave, so they'll pick other candidates if they can. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Illegal things happen ALL THE TIME, and perps get away with it when there's no enforcement or the plaintiff doesn't have enough proof, time or money to fight said injustice. For example, on my street it's illegal to drive over 30kph, and yet half the cars that drive by go over 45 simply because there's no law enforcement nearby to catch them and fine them. If there's no enforcement with direct consequences at scale, then a law is virtually useless.

For an employer to get into legal trouble over pregnancy or racial or nationality discrimination with government authorities, that means the candidate would need to know upfront and have proof that they were discriminated against over those immutable characteristics, which is rarely the case as everyone just gets the same copy-paste legally safe rejection email from HR: "we regret to inform you that you didn't make the final cut because candidates with better experience/qualifications bla bla bla" and that's where it ends. You will never know what they discussed in private.

But that's not the reason women have few kids here. The reason is mostly cultural and environmental.

[niemandhier]

It’s still pretty normal for public sector positions to have this discussions behind closed doors.

Once you have the job, it’s hard to fire you. So it’s a reoccurring pattern that people apply, work for the minimum needed time to get paid parental leave and then start to implement their family plans.

That is completely within their legal rights and for society as a whole it’s a good thing to have more kids.

At the same time it’s also bad for everyone else in the same team.

[trumpdong]

Happens in Germany. As long as she can't prove it, she can't win a suit.