According to several studies, a turnaround occurred in Hungary in 2013 and the level of poverty has decreased continuously for the past three years.

The improvement achieved as a result of the Hungarian reforms provides an opportunity to realise a significant reduction in poverty and in the number of people living in social exclusion in Hungary by 2020. The Hungarian Government has introduced several measures in recent years and had launched many successful programmes that have contributed to this improving trend.

Thanks to the measures introduced by the Hungarian Government, 600 thousand people have succeeded in breaking out of poverty wince 2012. According to figures from Eurostat, the ratio of people in risk of living in poverty and social exclusion fell to 31.8% by 2013 and fell a further 3.6 percentage points to 28.2 percent by 2014. The number of people living at the highest level of social exclusion fell by 166 thousand in 2014. This was significantly contributed to by Government measures such as saving people trapped in forex debt, the public work programme and the reduction of public utility charges. Thanks to the implementation of the Hungarian National Social Inclusion Strategy launched in 2011, the living conditions of disadvantaged and Roma communities have also improved in most respects in recent years. The ratio of people in risk of living in poverty and social exclusion among Hungary’s Roma minority fell by some 6 percentage points, their income poverty decreased by almost 5 percent and the most striking improvement in their case occurred with regard to reducing work poverty, which fell from 45.3% in 2013 to 26-7% in 2014, an improvement of 18%.

These results were achieved without causing an increase in government debt in the previous year.

The Government also reorganised the system for providing benefits to people in need. The new system is fairer and more transparent, in addition to which it puts a stop to benefit abuse. Social inclusion is also being facilitated by the fact that parallel to the introduction of compulsory nursery school attendance form the age of 3, from 1 September 2015 the Government has also significantly expanded the number of children who receive free school meals. The Government is paying special attention to helping children from disadvantaged families, who receive free textbooks and are also included in the free school meals programme. The most disadvantages sub-regions and settlements are grappling with complex, interacting problems that effect the level of regeneration of child poverty. The 15 billion forint priority tender, which supports integrated regional children’s programmes and which can be applied for by the child welfare centres of the county’s 31 most disadvantages districts and the municipalities that maintain them, focuses on overcoming and preventing child poverty and on reducing the number of children living in poor families and permanent need.

“Sure Start” (Biztos Kezdet) children’s houses,  where disadvantaged children can receive the services required for their development as early as possible, represent one of the central elements of the Governments’ inclusion policy. Recent years have seen the development of the Sure Start system and the central budget now contributes to the maintenance of 112 children’s houses, with a further fifty set to open thanks to an upcoming new tender.

The “Special School” (Tanoda) programme is continuing with a budget of over 5 billion forints (EUR 16.3M), and which offers trained experts to provide children with after school extracurricular activities. The battle against early school leaving is given a priority role within the field of education in the 2011 social inclusion strategy. One of the best tools for this is the Special School programme, which helps children explore their capabilities, nurtures young talents and improves school performance.

(Ministry of Human Capacities)