The Family Capital program, which expires in 2024, would be extended in Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko announced on March 5. The reason is that its effectiveness has been proven.
“When we started this practice of family capital, we had 63 thousand multi-child families. Now it's 123 thousand. Judge for yourself. We are handling the most important issue,” he said.
His statement was repeated two days later by presenter Polina Konoga on SB TV:
“The program arose at the proper time. And we see that during the implementation of this program, the number of large families in the country has doubled.”
Under the Family Capital program, upon the birth of a third child, a family receives about $10 thousand as a frozen fund. The fund is unfrozen as soon as the child reaches the age of majority. The program started in Belarus in 2015.
In 2015, Belarus had 80 thousand large families, Deputy Prime Minister Natalya Kochanova said in March 2016. From her words, it follows that over the years of the program, the growth was 55%. So, the growth rate of large families was one and a half times.
The Family capital was intended to increase the birth rate. In 2015, at the start of the program, the fertility rate (the number of children per woman) was 1.7, after 4 years, it dropped to 1.39.
Since 2020, Belstat has stopped publishing data on fertility. However, the trend has not changed, as Elena Goshkevich, deputy director of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center “Mother and Child” for obstetrics and gynecology, said in October 2023.
“If we talk about clear data, we have a decline in the birth rate of approximately 10% every year. And in 2019, and in 2020, and in 2021, and in 2022. And in 2023 we expect the same minus 10%,” she said on STV.
The BIC covered the causes of the demographic crisis in the analytical article “Tinder exit impact on Belarus’ demography. Why Belarusians are increasingly less likely to start families and have kids”.