Romanian Ministry of Family kicks off program aimed at increasing fertility rates
Gabriela Firea, the Minister of Family, Youth, and Equal Opportunities, announced the ministry’s financial aid program to pump up the birth rate in Romania, which has recorded its lowest blow in 134 years according to the National Institute of Statistics’ recent finding.
Last month, the government opened a social program to aid couples and women between the ages of 20 and 45 struggling with fertility with financial support worth RON 15,000 (some EUR 3,000) granted in two schemes: a drug treatment voucher worth RON 5,000 and another RON 10,000 for the clinics’ fertilization procedure.
On January 17, the minister herself has symbolically handed out the first tickets of the program for the first ten women who’d signed up. Hundreds of more to come in the next period.
“I am handing out the first tickets needed for the fertilization procedures. From today, the vouchers will be sent to all couples whose files have been declared eligible. Thousands of couples and single women applied for the support of RON 15,000,” minister Firea said.
“The validation commission has already analyzed over 600 files and of these, 350 files were declared eligible. On all these files, the vouchers will be mailed in the coming days, but not before the applicants sign the contract with the ministry,” she added.
In addition to the rising prices for raising a child due to inflation, 1 out of 5 Romanian couples struggles with infertility. Many young couples even consider owning pets instead of children as their life companion, as reported in this Romania Insider’s feature, and even if they do, the expenses during pregnancy and the first year of the baby’s life can amount up to RON 16,400 or even more, according to Picodi’s 2020 analysis.
On a bigger scale, several European Union countries are facing a sharp decline in their working-age population (age 15 to 39), according to new data shared by the European Commission this week. Between 2015 and 2020, it has decreased by 3.5 million people and is expected to plummet to an additional 35 million by 2050. Romania, alongside Latvia and Bulgaria, is severely impacted due to low birth rates and migration outflows.
(Photo source: Gabriela Firea/Facebook)
