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Policy Evaluation When uncontrollable population growth rate threatens countries like China and India, some European countries like Estonia are challenged by a critically low birthrate. “In 2001, the United Nations issued a report in which it forecast that, given its current birthrate, by 2050, the population of Estonia would decline from 1.4 million to only about 700,000” (Given file, p. 5). In response to this report, the government of Estonia has begun to pay women who have babies. The government thinks that this strategy will improve the country’s critically low birthrate.

However, some critics argue that this program just influenced women to have a baby earlier, rather than to have more babies. Evidently, the fundamental intention of this program is to increase the number of babies a woman has and thereby increase the overall birthrate of the country. In order to improve the chances that this program’s economic incentives would truly increase the birthrate, it is recommendable for the government to increase the amount of payment with respect to the number of babies.

When women are paid on the basis of the number of babies they have, they are likely to give birth to more babies. Similarly, it would be a good idea to double the payment to the women who deliver their third of fourth baby. The government can consider some other attractive offers such as cars, laptop, or free electricity to women who conceive third or fourth time. The government may also consider opening a bank account in the name of newborn infants and bearing their full life expenses till they reach a particular age limit.

Such alterations to this program may influence women to have more babies rather than to have a baby earlier. In addition, the government must pay all the hospital bills related to pregnancy/delivery and provide women with nutritional foods for some months post delivery. So as to determine whether or not this program really assists the country to increase its birthrate, the government can perform periodical census programs. Evaluating the increases in the country’s total tax revenues is also a potential strategy to analyze the performance efficiency of the program implemented.

Finally, analyzing school entry data at primary classes can be a practical way to assess the outcome of the program.