How should a real pro-social, pro-family and pro-development socio-economic policy be conducted?

Dariusz Prokopowicz @Dariusz-Prokopowicz

01 January 1970 5 4K Report

In your opinion, how should a realistically pro-social, pro-family and pro-development socio-economic policy be conducted, i.e. that it is a realistically pro-social, pro-family and pro-development socio-economic policy and not a populist pseudo-economic policy, designed and constructed in such a way that it mainly helps to win successive parliamentary elections for the political party that introduced and implements this policy?

In the country where I operate in terms of socio-economic policy, the PIS government in 2016 introduced the Family 500 Plus programme, i.e. a social programme of financial support for raising children provided to parents or other legal guardians of the children being raised. Similar social programmes of financial support for the upbringing of children operate in highly developed countries in Europe. Thanks to the election promises, which also included the announcement of the introduction of this programme, the PIS party won the parliamentary elections in 2015 and then later also the next parliamentary elections in 2019. I researched this issue at the time and in the articles published at the time I pointed out the key issues that should be taken into account by the government in the introduction of this Family 500 Plus programme so that it is a key element of a real pro-social, pro-family and pro-development social and economic policy and not a populist pseudo-economic policy, including that the key strategic objectives should be achieved. Well, the key strategic objective of the introduction of this programme of social financial support for families bringing up children was to reduce the scale and slow down the progressive change in the demographic structure of society consisting in the successive and exceptionally rapid ageing of the population since the beginning of the 21st century. The effect of this programme was to be a significant increase in the fertility rate.

Unfortunately, this strategic goal has not been realised. In 2021-2022, the birth rate in Poland was the lowest since the end of the mid-20th century. Unfortunately, the Family 500 Plus programme was not implemented reliably, the government did not take into account the results of research conducted by independent economists in designing this programme and in its implementation. What I wrote about several years ago in the aforementioned articles was ignored. Unfortunately, instead of improving this programme, correcting the mistakes made, in May 2023, the government announced the continuation of this programme in the following years without any amendments, but with an increase in the amount paid per child per month from the existing and functioning for 7 years of the same amount of PLN 500 to PLN 800 from January 2024. On the other hand, the next parliamentary elections are to be held in October 2023, which the ruling PIS party is also planning to join. Therefore, in the opinion of citizens, it is obvious that this Family 500 Plus programme has become a programme of mainly populist pseudo-economic policy.

In view of the above, I would like to address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

How, in your opinion, should a realistically pro-social, pro-family and pro-development socio-economic policy be conducted, i.e. that it is a realistically pro-social, pro-family and pro-development socio-economic policy and not a populist pseudo-economic policy, designed and constructed in such a way that it mainly helps to win successive parliamentary elections for the political party that introduced and implements this policy?