| That baby boom was an echo of the first post-war baby boom and fueled by a record 274k newly built apartments in 1979 - a culmination of a decade of ramping up construction when Edward Gierek took over and started borrowing money on a massive scale[0]. As a father of two I can tell you right now why demographics in Poland are in the gutter: most families need two incomes to survive, but: -Companies insist every employee works full time. -Women often have nothing to come back to after maternity leave. -Daycares, kindergartens etc. are open for 9h at most, so pray your commute isn't too long if you have two or more kids. -Commutes to these institutions have become longer as on one hand more people live in the suburbs while on the other urban planners kinda sorta forgot you need to carve out some land for a school/kindergarten when you're planning a new residential area, so if you live in a recent-ish building forget about leaving the car at home. Most people seeing all these obstacles just settle on one child, whom they can leave and pick up in shifts. My family copes by living on a single income, which is still possible today if you're a software engineer, but most likely won't be long term. [0] In hindsight it wasn't a terrible plan - there was enormaous demographic potential |