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Poll: half of Poland’s 500+ payouts added to family budgets

PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea 21.10.2016 14:43
Nearly 50 percent of Poles spend their “500+” social aid payouts on family needs, a new poll shows.
Photo: Flickr.com/Antoine KPhoto: Flickr.com/Antoine K

The 500+ programme is a government flagship initiative providing Polish families with PLN 500 monthly payouts for children.

According to the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS) survey, 44 percent of Poles spend their monthly allowance on clothes and shoes, holidays, educational materials, loan payments and other needs.

Thirty-four percent regularly save or invest the money, while the rest (around 21 percent) of those polled partly spend and partly set the benefit aside.

Family minister Elżbieta Rafalska said on Thursday that nearly 3.8 million children have received a total of PLN 11.3 bln since the programme was launched on 1 April.

“It was worth it, and it’s good to see that this benefit has an effect on the Polish economy,” Rafalska said.

She said that poverty rates have fallen since the benefits started being paid out, “but we will have to wait at least a year for the longed-for effect of improved fertility rates”. The new handouts, designed to counteract a looming demographic crisis, were a key pledge by the Law and Justice (PiS) party ahead of its victory in the country’s general election last year.

Families on the programme receive PLN 500 a month per child for the second child onwards and also for first-born children in the case of low-income families. (vb/rg)

Source: PAP, mpips.gov.pl

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