Ella Libanova, Director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research, said that the problem of means of encouraging the population to give birth is connected with the fact that these means are mainly reduced to direct payments of money. She spoke about this in an interview with Apostrophe TV.
Libanova noted that she does not know what Ukraine can offer to people with small children during the war.
"Build kindergartens? Here we need to give the family the opportunity not to become poor during the birth of a child and the first years after that. Even if we build a sufficient number of preschool institutions, when something can go boom every hour, how can we send a child somewhere?" the scientist noted.
At the same time, in peacetime, according to Ella Libanova, the emphasis should be placed not on direct cash payments.
"We need to develop preschool and extracurricular institutions for children. We need to really develop opportunities for flexible employment. Let's say a mother works the first half of the day, one of the relatives looks after the child, or after that. We need to create opportunities for remote employment," the scientist noted.
Another problem with government fertility programs is that families may delay having children until the program is in place, so the birth rate may fall.
"Then the birth rate remains high for two or three years, then it starts to fall again. It's a classic case of dose-effect. If you want the birth rate to continue to be high, increase payments. But there are barriers there," the sociologist said.
According to the scientist, these barriers are not only budgetary.
"The social transfer cannot exceed the salary. Otherwise, it is wrong. The social transfer should be less than the salary. And our salaries are low. Accordingly, a low salary is a barrier to increasing payments at the birth of a child," Libanova said.
Earlier, Apostrophe wrote that there are three deaths for every newborn in Ukraine – this figure has remained stable since 2020.