Paying Germans to Breed

I'm not sure how I feel about this:

Der Spiegel reports:

Germans greeted the arrival of the new year with their usual vigor, letting off hundreds of thousands of fireworks across the country in the early hours of 2007. For couples celebrating the arrival of new babies, there was another reason to be merry -- parents of children born after the turn of the year were eligible for generous new child support payments.

A new law, designed to encourage Germans to have children in a bid to boost the sagging German population, was born -- after a long and protracted gestation period -- on Jan. 1, 2007. For new parents whose babies arrive in the new year, it will mean a possible difference of tens of thousands of euros.

Read it here.