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Conservative Austrians struggle to raise birth rate

Despite a conservative government that fervently backs family values and which created cash incentives to keep the kids coming, Austria is losing the battle to increase one of the lowest birth rates in the EU bloc, experts say.

This European heartland of eight million people has no monopoly on a demographic problem troubling many countries in the western world.

But its lack of success in reversing the trend helped prompt the government to force through painful pension reforms this year that triggered the biggest strikes since World War II in this normally consensus-oriented country.

In the heat of the debate, Education Minister Elisabeth Gehrer only fueled the fire when she admonished "Austrian youth [to] spend less time in nightclubs and more time making babies to help pay for pensioners."

But birth rates remain "very, very low" because it is "difficult for women in Austria to reconcile combining professional life and family life," said Christopher Prinz, a population expert for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

According to the latest statistics from 2000, Austria's birth rate was down to 1.34 births per woman, a level lower than most of its partners in the 15-member EU.

Only Orthodox Greece and mainly Catholic Italy and Spain are lower -- ironically all Mediterranean cultures where family traditionally played a central role.

In January last year, the right-wing coalition created a new "parental" allowance of 436 euros (US$504) per month for three years for any parent of a new baby, whether or not he or she was employed.

The hitch was those eligible could not be earning more than 1,200 euros per month.

The leftist opposition quickly denounced the initiative as a bid to return Austrian women to the three-Ks tradition of "Kinder, Kueche und Kirche" -- children, kitchen and church.

Critics, including many economists, came down hard on the wage ceiling, saying the new payment would add just enough to other state allowances to incite a beneficiary -- mainly women -- to stay at home and out of the job market.

When combined with the standard family allowance -- a monthly payment for minor children typical in much of Europe -- and a tax break for children that equals abut 150 euros per month, the new parental allowance would bring total benefits to around 600 euros per month.

But despite all the pros and cons, the new allowance "had no notable effect on birth rates," said OECD expert Prinz.

Though Austria boasts a well-developed social benefits system, day care structures for pre-school children are sorely lacking.

The Austrian Statistics Institute estimates that 50,000 more places are needed across the country.

Only four percent of Austrian children under three now benefit from state-financed day care, as compared with 64 percent in Denmark and 20 percent in France.

Add to this a profoundly conservative streak in Austrian society.

Many Austrians still feel that home is best and putting young children in day care could harm their psychological development, the Profil weekly noted recently.
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