By AZE.US
Azerbaijan should gradually introduce monthly child benefits, beginning with payments to families raising a second child, economist and REAL Party Chairman Natig Jafarli has proposed.
Jafarli said more than 920,000 second-born children live in Azerbaijan. Paying 100 manats, or approximately $59, per month for each of them would require roughly 1.1 billion manats ($647 million) annually.
“The first stage could provide 100 manats for every second child. The program could then be expanded to third, fourth and subsequent children. The state budget can afford this,” Jafarli said in an interview with Globalinfo.az.
He proposed a five-year program under which the payments would be introduced gradually. Families could initially receive 100 manats per month for a second child, followed by payments of 150 manats, or about $88, for a third child during a later phase.
Jafarli linked the proposed benefits to Azerbaijan’s declining birth rate. According to figures he cited, approximately 194,000 children were born annually during the early years of the country’s independence. That number fell to about 95,000 last year, representing a decline of more than 50%.
“The number of births has been falling for 10 years. Compared with the early years of independence, it has nearly halved. These are very serious figures,” he said.
However, Jafarli cautioned that introducing child benefits alone would not automatically reverse the demographic trend. Financial support could have a positive effect, he said, but it would need to form part of a broader social and demographic policy.
Azerbaijan currently has approximately 2.7 million children and teenagers under the age of 18. Jafarli said more than 500,000 of them already receive state support through various benefits and assistance programs.
He argued that the existing payments should be reorganized into a clearer and more consistent system that would allow families to understand what support they can expect over the coming years.
Jafarli also criticized calls for child benefits of between 500 and 1,000 manats per month, or approximately $294 to $588, describing such proposals as populist and financially unrealistic.
Any child-benefit program should be based on the government’s fiscal capacity and introduced in stages, he said.
The proposal has not been formally adopted or introduced by the Azerbaijani government.
AZE.US