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168 GÁBOR PIRISI Persian Gulf (high fertility rate, young age composition, high incomes, high-quality health service). Let us here take a look at migration as a modifying factor. It is only one side of the coin that mass migration increases or decreases the population of a region or country. Migration also influences natural growth (Kulu 2005). In countries characterized by immigration, there is a constant influx of a population group whose average age is younger than that of the recipient country. This would have a positive effect on reproduction even if the fertility rate of the immigrating communities were not higher than the host country’s average (Genereux 2007): they usually arrive from countries with a tradition of having more children, and they normally adhere to their customs in their new homes, at least in the first one or two generations, with the difference gradually decreasing later. Obviously, on the global scale, migration only modifies the distribution of people. What can be seen as its positive impact is that in the sender regions, migration slackens the pressure on resources and social institutions. Also, the emigrating families’ fertility rate decreases faster than the rate of those who stay at home. It also mitigates — to however modest an extent — the problem of overpopulation. Leaving aside the several legal, cultural, economic and mainly political implications of international migration , we must still note that in countries (particularly on the eastern periphery of Europe) where emigration is coupled with a low fertility rate and the natural decrease of the population, its impact on the local societies is considerable (Atoyan et al. 2016). To influence the growth of the population, some countries may draw up — more or less deliberately and more or less emphatically — demographic policies and may introduce certain measures. In actual fact, these policies can be one of two kinds: pronatalist (wishing to increase the number of live births) and (to use a rarely applied term) antinatalist (aimed at decreasing their number). Traditionally, the growth of the number of inhabitants in a nation-state is tied to the increase in the power of the nation: a growing population means growing labor reserves and military potential. It follows that authoritarian regimes expressly pursue pronatalist policies, and they are not over-scrupulous in choosing their means: their activity is characterized by obligations and restrictions (bans on abortion, restriction on access to contraceptives, punitive tax policies). Countries governed democratically may also pursue a pronatalist policy, but their means are less drastic. Instead of prohibitions and obligations, they try to use incentives. The extent of their success varies, for the effectiveness of these policies and the pertinent soft means are often doubtful. The introduction of a new tool may enhance fertility for a short time, but its effect often proves transitory. As Figure 2 reveals, individual countries spend widely varying portions of their GDP on family support (which is, of course, a broader concept than demographic policy), but the differences are not really reflected in the fertility rates. It is not too informative to compare countries of very different backgrounds, but some comparisons, for example, in Central Europe may be noteworthy: while Slovakia and Slovenia both spend about 1.75% of their GDPs on family support, the corresponding figure in Hungary and Poland is 2.6-2.75%, but the fertility rate in all of these countries is around 1.5 (which also reveals that religion is not such a powerful influencer as is normally believed, because every known survey has registered a far more intense religiosity in the Polish population than in the Hungarian) (Inglot 2020).
