Preface

Since 1990, the Social Report has been presenting the most important changes in Hungarian society every two years. It publishes empirical analyses and evaluations, striving to follow the most important processes in Hungarian society. For twenty years, the costs of the volume were financed by the ministry responsible for social affairs in the government of the day. This support ceased in 2012, and we were only able to publish the previous volume with the help of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and, to a lesser extent, the National Cultural Fund. After receiving another rejection from the ministry this year, we decided to discontinue the series. However, to our great delight, we received requests from professionals and the wider intellectual community that the Social Report was very much needed for both general social awareness and education. To "test" this demand, we published a call for community funding on the TÁRKI website. It was a pleasant surprise for us that we had to stop the collection after two weeks because the cost of the volume was covered by donations from 63 individuals and 8 institutions. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them! Their quick assistance clearly confirmed that there is a need for the Social Report and that others, like us, believe it is worth pursuing. We promised our supporters that we would "prepare an analysis of the most important processes in Hungarian society and the economy, partly for the past four years and partly for the past two years."