Ministry: Number of Severely Poor People in Hungary Plunges over Past Ten Years

MTI-Hungary Today 2021.02.19.

The proportion of people living in extreme poverty in Hungary has dropped from 23.4 percent to 8.7 percent in the past decade, the Ministry of Human Capacities (EMMI) said on Thursday, citing Eurostat data.

Hungary jumped from 6th from the bottom of the European Union list to 9th from the top.

The number of people without enough savings to make emergency replacements of eg, a washing machine or refrigerator has halved, while 2.5 million more people can now afford a week on holiday.

Ten years ago one in four people were struggling with mortgage arrears and other loan repayments; now only one in ten people do thanks to foreign currency loan rescue packages.

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Some 70,000 Hungarians who have not paid national insurance contributions for the past six months will lose access to the country’s public health-care services from mid-February, a government official has said. “Anyone who makes use of free public health services without paying a contribution creates an unjust situation,” Norbert Izer, the state secretary for tax […]Continue reading

Also, the number of people who have trouble heating their homes has dropped to a third thanks to a government-mandated reduction in household energy bills, the statement said.

featured image illustration via Sándor Ujvári/MTI