Series

Young people were affected disproportionately by the crisis facing the economies of the European Union in 2008–09 and they had to tackle difficulties during the ensuing lengthy stagnation (Eurofound, 2012; O’Reilly et al., 2015). The economic crisis and the period thereafter had serious consequences for youth: the proportion of the poor increased in the young age group and the differences in income between younger and older adults also increased. Nevertheless, the signs of the economic crisis diminished in the middle of the decade, and the economies of most of the EU countries started to grow again, while unemployment started to decline. This chapter aims at briefly presenting the labour market and income situation of young people in the countries of the EU in the period since the economic crisis. The impact of the recession on the labour market chances and incomes of young people differed not only across countries, but also across social groups. Family background determines how vulnerable young people are in a period of economic crisis and how they are able to tackle the consequences of recession. By passing down material, cultural and network capital, families influence the life chances of their children. Young people with few inherited resources tend to enter the labour market with lower qualifications and lower skill levels, and they are less likely to possess the information and connections needed for success. For them, the threat of long-term unemployment partly results from the conditions they inherited. In addition, family can alleviate the detrimental effects of the crisis by helping children with material and/or nonmaterial transfers. Accordingly, the chapter will also cover the inequalities of opportunities among young people to tackle the economic crisis, describing the impact of family background on educational attainment and labour market outcomes. It is primarily the 15–24 and 15–29 age groups that will be analysed. This age includes obtaining qualifications and entry to the labour market. In some cases, we raised the upper limit to 34, since difficulties in labour market integration also affect people in their early thirties because of the longer time spent in education.

The Hungarian Social Report 2019 forms part of the long-standing tradition of social reporting in Europe. As Noll and Berger (2014: 9) emphasize, social reports and social monitoring activities are aimed at ‘regular monitoring and analysis of as well as reporting on the living conditions and well-being of the population and their changes over time’. By generating quantitative information and empirically based analytical knowledge on well-being and progress in a society (or group of societies), social reporting can contribute to better-informed evidence-based policy making. While social monitoring is about the periodic production of carefully developed indicators and indicator systems, social reporting goes beyond this to incorporate analysis, interpretation and evaluation of trends (Noll, 2004: 163). The Hungarian Social Report first appeared in 1990 (Andorka et al., 1990a; 1990b). Its aim was to join the already existing reporting traditions of France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom (to mention just a few of the most prominent reporting countries). Rudolf Andorka, Tamás Kolosi and György Vukovich, the editors of the first edition, set the series goal of painting as complete a picture as possible of Hungarian society. Theirs was the first social report published in a post-socialist Eastern European country. Since then, a Social Report has been published every two years by TÁRKI Social Research Institute (for the most recent one, see Kolosi and Tóth, 2018) – and with this frequency it is certainly among the leaders on the international social reporting scene. The Hungarian Social Report series is envisaged as a collection of analytical chapters covering several domains, such as social structure, mobility, elements of well-being, values and attitudes, and addressing specific issues and problems in particular years. As such, it belongs to a tradition that also provides evaluation and interpretation of social trends: it aims to go beyond data, to offer better information for political decision making on the one hand, and on the other to provide the general reader with a better idea of social trends. As has been mentioned, a Hungarian edition has appeared every two years since 1990. But an English edition is published much less frequently: in 1990, 1998 and 2004 (see Kolosi et al., 2004).

It is an old and profoundly justified wish of Hungarian society to catch up with European living standards and to make up the arrears that history created.1 That is essentially what the 2018 Eurobarometer survey also expresses: 61 per cent of respondents – i.e. a rate higher than the 56 per cent EU average – feel attached to the EU and 20 per cent feel strongly attached (the corresponding EU average is 14 per cent, and in Portugal the figure is a mere 7 per cent) (EC, 2018). Hungary’s detachment from and/or convergence with the EU has become a favourite subject for politicians and journalists over recent years. Economic literature on growth recognizes two approaches to convergence. One is σ-convergence, meaning a narrowing of the spread in the levels of economic development of countries (see Dalgaard and Vastrup, 2001; Mille and Upadhyay, 2002; Lucke, 2008; Monfort, 2008; Pfaffermayr, 2009). The other is β-convergence, whereby less-developed countries approach the level of more-developed ones thanks to their faster growth (see Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 1992; Mankiw et al., 1992; Michelacci and Zaffaroni, 1998). In this chapter, we investigate the question in accordance with this second approach, but we will cover it in more than just economic terms. We embark on an analysis of long-term tendencies. Our main question is: have we come any closer to the European economy and European living standards since the regime change, or do the data justify the detachment theories? Gábor Oblath’s 2014 article (Oblath, 2014) reviews economic performance – measured by GDP – from the point of view of convergence. Our paper may be viewed in many ways as a kind of extended supplementary note which, at certain points, adds further nuances to the conclusions drawn from GDP trends.

In the June 2018 issue of The Atlantic, Matthew Stewart published an article entitled ‘The birth of a new American aristocracy’ and carrying the subtitle: ‘The 9.9 percent is the new American aristocracy. The class divide is already toxic and is fast becoming unbridgeable.’ Well, The Atlantic is not a major social science journal (certainly not in the same league as the American Journal of Sociology or the American Sociological Review), so perhaps there is no need to pay it much attention… Nevertheless, there is some serious academic writing on the subject, especially by Richard Reeves and Robert Putnam (and some mainstream sociologists/demographers whom we cite later in this chapter), who also express concern over greater social closure (or less ‘fluidity’) at the top of US society; and so the question of a ‘New Aristocracy’ – at least in the US – may deserve some consideration. At the same time, mobility studies report on a decrease in social fluidity in the post-transition countries, which to some extent runs counter to previous expectations about rising meritocracy following the collapse of socialist regimes (including Kolosi et al., 2003; Breen and Luijkx, 2004; Jackson and Evans, 2017). In what follows, we first look at the findings and predictions of the US literature of social closure at the top. Then we review how Hungary fares in international comparison with regard to social mobility developments, especially at certain points in the vertical hierarchy. Then we attempt to identify social processes that point to closure at the broadly understood top of society (the highest quartile or so). While it is impossible to pinpoint the ‘exact’ place of the cleavage border, we argue that it is certainly well below the often targeted ‘top 1 per cent’.

Outward migration from today’s Hungary is a fact: it is one of the most worrying social problems, and although its extent is difficult to measure, it has been visibly increasing since 2010–11. Early in the decade, growing signs prompted a question in the Social Report about whether Hungary was following the regional trend in outward migration; by the middle of the decade the answer was clear (Hárs, 2012; 2016). Future trends can only be guessed at. For a long time, outward migration from Hungary was less pronounced than from most of the region’s countries and its structure was rather different; thus its impact and implications are not yet known. This chapter investigates where Hungary stands in the growing tendency toward outward migration from the Eastern European region and looks at its specific features and its impact on the labour market.

In Hungary, the financial and economic crisis (and its aftermath) upset the stagnating or slightly improving poverty trends of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both inequality and relative income poverty rates1 increased during the period from 2007 to 2012/13 (from 12.6 per cent to 17 per cent between 2007 and 2012, based on TÁRKI data, and from 12.3 per cent to 15 per cent between 2007 and 2013, according to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office – HCSO). Moreover, the increase in the severe material deprivation rate2 (which is strongly correlated with real income) was especially dramatic (TÁRKI: from 34 per cent to 37 per cent between 2009 and 2012; HCSO: from 18 per cent to 28 per cent between 2007 and 2013). Then both indicators decreased significantly after the crisis: the former from 15 per cent to 13.4 per cent, and the latter from 28 per cent to 16 per cent, according to the HCSO (HCSO, 2017; Szivós and Tóth, 2012). Aside from the crisis, social policy interventions that shifted with the political wind also affected poverty trends (Gábos and Tóth, 2017). Analysis of the cross-sectional TÁRKI Household Monitor surveys indicates that some of the tendencies visible in the post-transition period increased during the financial and economic crisis (2009–12); thus social segregation and the intergenerational transmission of poverty have been on the rise (Gábos et al., 2012). The drop in the severe material deprivation rate between 2012 and 2014 was mostly thanks to groups at low risk of poverty leaving deprivation status (Gábos et al., 2015: 57). Our aim is to check whether or not these conclusions based on cross-sectional survey data are also supported by panel data. First, we look at how data from the longitudinal survey can supplement the snapshots of cross-sectional data. For example, it is important for social policy making to see whether most of the people living in poverty in a given year are persistently or only temporarily poor, and to identify which social groups are more likely to enter or exit poverty. In Hungary, 13.8 per cent of the population were income poor in 2011 and 64 per cent were persistently income poor.3 Both values are around the EU average. Similarly, the proportion of people who exited poverty during 2008–12 was close to the EU aver-age: approximately 35 per cent of the people at risk of poverty in the preceding year. Meanwhile, the share of people entering poverty was 5.5 per cent on average during this period – below the EU average (Vaalavuo, 2015). How-ever, basing its conclusions on earlier data (from 2006–09), the European Commission has categorized Hungary as a country with a high risk of entering poverty and a low risk of exiting it, and with a relatively high persistent at-risk-of-poverty rate (EC, 2013). We analyse the longitudinal database of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), coordinated by Eurostat. First, we briefly describe the database and our methodology (section 2); then we show the trends of persistent poverty and persistent severe material deprivation in the EU (section 3). In section 4, we turn to Hungary and compare the sociodemographic characteristics of those groups that entered poverty and severe material deprivation between 2009 and 2012 with those groups that exited poverty and deprivation between 2011 and 2014. We also report multivariate statistics on the correlation between these socio-demographic characteristics and the measures of poverty (section 5). Finally, in section 6, we summarize our findings.

Health status can be viewed as a complex ‘outcome indicator’ of a country’s socio-economic and political processes (Sen, 1995) because a long and healthy life is in itself a valued outcome for individuals. It is also one of the key components of well-being at both the societal and the individual level that are fundamentally influenced by government policies. Furthermore, the right to health is one of the fundamental dimensions of human dignity, hu-man rights and the fulfilment of democratic norms. Currently, the growth in health inequalities poses a serious threat to the economic performance and long-term social progress of Hungary. Alleviation of these inequalities is of fundamental importance to Hungarian society (Orosz and Kollányi, 2014). Health inequalities have received increasing attention in the international arena since the early 2000s, following a long period of ‘being forgotten’ (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2000). The greater attention to health inequalities is part of a broader paradigm shift. Research – as well as increasing social and political tension – has highlighted the fact that social polarization, disintegration and the upsurge in political extremism represent threats not only to individual well-being, security and life satisfaction, but also to long-term eco-nomic development (OECD, 2011). Demographic change – and the declining share of the active population – has drawn attention to the human factors of economic growth. This has brought about a new approach in the European Commission’s health policy: governments have been encouraged to consider good health and health care as a key factor contributing to a quantitative and qualitative improvement in labour supply, as well as to long-term eco-nomic growth (European Commission, 2007). However, the economic crisis that broke in 2008 did have a number of negative effects on health and health care: on the one hand, it aggravated the social risks associated with health inequalities; on the other, it further reduced the availability of re-sources to tackle those inequalities (WHO, 2013). Public spending on health fell in real terms in a number of countries – including Hungary – in the early 2010s (Quaglio et al., 2013). Different aspects of the inequalities in health and health care have been addressed by social research in Hungary since the early 1980s, and thus a substantial body of knowledge has accumulated over recent decades (see, for example, Hablicsek, 2007; Józan 1994; Kovács 2007; 2012; Kopp and Szedmák, 1998; Losonczi, 1989; Orosz, 1990). Nevertheless, considering their importance, health inequalities have thus far received limited attention among the political elite and the public.

The status of the rule of law (hereafter RoL) has been steadily deteriorating in Hungary. This has come about via a number of minor steps that demonstrate a clear downward trend.1 The individual steps have been documented in detail not only in the legal literature (e.g. Jakab, 2011; Sonnevend et al., 2015), but also in the international press dealing with Hungary. However, the extent of the deterioration has often been unclear, with even experts sometimes disagreeing.2 This is due to a number of factors, the most important probably being that experts in the field are normally lawyers, who are usually untrained in quantitative methods. Traditional (qualitative) lawyerly methods are generally a reliable means of establishing whether a certain measure is in breach of the RoL. However, lawyers are not familiar with gauging the extent to which the RoL has deteriorated in a country. Another epistemological problem is that lawyers normally concentrate on the analysis of formal legal rules. But the nub of the problem in Hungary is precisely that the formal legal rules and the reality are increasingly growing apart, with changes taking place much more frequently in actual practices than in the formal legal rules (Jakab and Gajduschek, 2016). Such a situation may be comprehensively summed up by so-called ‘RoL indices’ that capture various details in a single indicator; more importantly, these give due consideration to actual practice.3 Such indices clearly reflect the erosion of the RoL in Hungary that has taken place in recent years and that (we have every reason to believe) will continue. In this chapter, we briefly present the values of two indices: (a) the RoL sub-index of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index and (b) the World Justice Project’s RoL Index. Within the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, the so-called ‘status index’ is the average of the democracy index (which includes an RoL sub-index) and the market economy index. Figure 1 clearly shows a gradual erosion of the RoL in Hungary. The management index, meanwhile, reflects the efficiency of government. It also shows a downward trend – that is, the erosion of the RoL has not boosted efficiency.

The eighth parliamentary elections since the 1988–90 regime change were held in Hungary on 8 April 2018. In a development probably without historical parallel in any sizeable democracy, the same party, Fidesz, won two thirds of the seats for the third time in a row in a national election. This achievement is lessened somewhat by the fact that this perennial winner is formally an alliance of two parties; but one of the two, the Christian Democrats (KDNP), has had no noticeable popular support on its own for the last 15 years or so. To put these Hungarian results into context: in the past 200 years, a single party has only twice obtained two thirds of the seats in a British general election, while such a majority has never been recorded in Germany, Italy or Japan, despite the enduring dominance of a single party (or party alliance) in all these countries in the years since the Second World War. Such a thing has never occurred in any of those free, competitive elections held since 1990 in the former communist countries – not even in tiny Montenegro, which has been governed by the same party since 1990. The practical importance of this exceptional result is further heightened by the fact that in Hungary a two-thirds majority in the only chamber of parliament means that any law can be changed – and any clause of the constitution amended – by a one-off decision. In this sense, the 2018 Hungarian parliamentary elections have given unlimited power to a single party for a third time. As Figure 1 shows, it is unusual, but not unheard-of, for a single party to receive around 50 per cent of the vote in a free and fair election – the Maltese Labour Party, quite exceptionally, gained 55 per cent of the popular vote in 2017. But it is only in authoritarian regimes that we are ever likely to find one party winning two thirds of the seats. Single parties in government are even less able to change constitutional rules: the only democracies that have a population of over half a million and still let a single legislative house change constitutional rules on its own are found where that chamber is elected under proportional representation. This raises the inevitable question about the democratic nature of Hungary’s political system. I will not devote space to this question here, because many observers have already noted the partisan bias in the electoral rules, media coverage and oversight bodies, and the extreme inequity in the public resources committed to the election campaigns of the various parties (e.g. OSCE/ODIHR, 2018).

Issues of foreign policy are traditionally treated as marginal in Hungarian political discourses. A good indicator of how little interest foreign policy is-sues generate is the low rate of familiarity with the names of European leaders, even in comparison to other countries in the region (see for example: Globsec, 2018). But Russia is clearly an exception to this rule. The strengthening Russian–Hungarian relationship – in line with the ‘opening up to the East’ policy of the post-2010 Orbán cabinets – has deeply divided Hungarian politics and Hungarian public opinion. Russia’s higher profile in the Hungarian mind is partly a consequence of the crisis in Crimea and Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Still, interestingly, since the annexation of Crimea – and despite the unfavourable historical experiences of Hungarians with Russia – there has been a decline in Hungarians’ threat perception towards Russia. While it is a commonplace that public opinion is primarily shaped by historical experience, this chapter will argue - based on the experiences from Hungary, where government has a dominant role in the public space – that political rhetoric can overwrite the impact of historical experiences. 1 The reason is that foreign policy is very distant from the day-to-day experiences of ordinary people, and this fact offers great scope for shaping public opinion. Of course, it is not so everywhere: there are countries where the scope for reshaping public opinion is more limited, when it comes to Russia, what happened in Hungary could not occur in Poland, for example, partly because of the historical experience of the Poles towards Russia, but more importantly, due to the higher level of political pluralism and lower level of media centralization in the country. Namely: a political force that was highly critical of Russia comes to power and promptly does a U-turn, outdoing the pro-Russian stance of the previous Gyurcsány-cabinets (2005-2010), which it had previously criticized for its sympathy to-wards Russia. The relationship with Russia, especially after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, has become a politically divisive issue not only in Hungary, but all over the Western world. In the European Parliament, it is predominantly the populist, radical right-wing and left-wing parties that support Putin’s Russia in their voting, their rhetoric and their diplomatic gestures; meanwhile the mainstream centre-right, liberal, social democratic and green parties are much more restrained (Krekó et al., 2015; Krekó and Győri, 2016; Shekhovtsov, 2017). And that affects public opinion: those who vote for populist right-wing parties in Western Europe are much more supportive of Vladimir Putin and Russia generally (Taylor, 2017; Letterman, 2018). In the US, meanwhile, public opinion has undergone a truly dramatic change – presumably not unrelated to the (mostly rhetorical) friendly gestures of President Trump to-ward Russia and Vladimir Putin, and to the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential elections on Donald Trump’s side, and against Hillary Clinton. The traditionally hawkish Republican electorate now regards Russia as much less of a threat; meanwhile the Democrats – generally the doves in this respect –r keeps a bigger distance from Russia now (Bialik, 2018). Thus, on this question, the two electorates practically swapped places.