One of the most striking policies of the government of Hungary, under its controversial prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is that it encourages couples who want to have children, to have them. At a time when young woke people make principled decisions not to reproduce lest they damage the environment (see Prince Harry and Meghan), Hungary’s minister for families, Katalin Novák, is going out of her way to help people have however many children they want.

Couples who declare they want children are entitled to a generous loan which goes down by a third with each child they produce – so it’s written off with the arrival of the third child. A woman who has four children doesn’t pay income tax. There’s a large housing subsidy for families with children, plus shared parental leave for the first three years. After that, there’s free (or heavily subsidised) nursery and preschool education with free meals – three or four a day – for nine in 10 schoolchildren. For poorer children, there’s a week’s free holiday in the country every summer.