At a meeting today with reporters in Yerevan to summarize her first 100 days in office, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Maneh Tandilyan said she wanted to focus on the country’s birth rate, noting that the government is proposing to increase state aid from 50,000 to 150,000 drams to families having a second child.

Tandilyan said that such a proposal was met with skepticism by some, but that the government believes that having a second child is of strategic importance in improving Armenia’s demographic state of affairs.