Abstract:

In the last thirty years, the share of the young population has been decreasing in the developed world thanks to a drop in the number of births, which results in an aging population. An aging population carries some other problems along with it. Most countries provide fiscal incentive programs for families to encourage higher levels of fertility rate. The current study investigates the fiscal incentive practices and their outcomes in the specific context of the following countries: France, Australia, Japan, Denmark, Canada and Russia. The fiscal incentive instruments include public expenditures in the form of cash and services, tax incentives and rights of leave. The findings of the study reveal that the fertility rate increased during those periods when there were sufficient incentive policies in place, and the pace of fertility rate was even higher in countries where stronger policy initiatives were adopted. The study concludes that fiscal incentives have probably contributed to this outcome by coordinating the work and family life especially for women. This study underlines a relevant and current problem since there has been a number of recent policy initiatives aiming to increase the fertility rate in our country, and such practices which is in developed country set an example particularly for developing countries with an aging population. We hope to contribute to Turkish public finance literature from a government incentives framework which have largely been neglected to date.

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