Norbert Izsák

Figuring the History of Hungary

Századok statisztikája (The Statistics of Centuries). Budapest, KSH (Central Bureau of Statistics), 2001, 246 pp.

 

It makes sense for a-popularising yet scholarly-publication to start off with the history of the agency responsible for itself. Whatever your angle of approach, it is of interest that the Chief Statistician of Hungary, Károly Keleti, was one of the founding members of the International Institute of Statistics (IIS, later ISI) established in 1885, and that there were as many as seven Hungarians amongst the original hundred statistician members. The Statistics of Centuries is, it should be said, a somewhat overstated title for a sketchy survey of a millennium followed by an assortment of figures referring to the state of society, the economy and the regions of Hungary in the past hundred years.
With the first Hungarian elections of this century looming as I write, the statistics of voter turnout are of topical interest. Many a political party would no doubt rejoice if turnout-which varied between 72 and 93 per cent of those entitled to vote between 1920 and 1947-was still a feature today. In the last three elections, it did not once exceed 69 per cent. Of course, things look different if we add that in 1926 fewer than 27 per cent of the population were entitled to vote, since 1990, more than 75 per cent have been so entitled. All the same, the figures for the first two post-war elections are note-worthy. In 1945 and 1947, close on 60 per cent of the population were enfranchised and more than nine tenths turned out at the polls.
In other words, in 1947 out of five million four hundred and eight thousand on the rolls, five million and thirty-one thousand cast their votes. Forty-three years later, in 1990, at the first post-Communist free elections, there were seven million eight hundred and twenty-four thousand on the rolls, but a "mere" four million nine hundred and eleven thousand voted.
Catastrophic conditions after the Second World War contributed to voting. Casualties of war-including the deportees-could be counted in millions. War damage exceeded 44 per cent of 1944's national wealth (around 22 billion pengő). Half of the country's livestock perished, a quarter of the manufacturing industry was destroyed, and half of the main railway lines were no more. True, close to 90 per cent of rolling stock survived the war but three quarters of it was pillaged. Not only did more than one hundred and twenty thousand damaged dwellings have to be repaired, but three hundred million dollars' worth of reparations had to be produced somehow. A fair proportion of economically active males had perished in the fighting, a further step in the direction of an aging poulation (a century-long trend). In 1870, 37 per cent of the population were children, a ratio which has declined to 17 per cent, while the proportion of the aged has quadrupled. This explains why the proportion of dependents has barely changed in the past hundred years. In 1910 too it amounted to 58 per cent. Then they were mainly housewives and children, today the greater proportion of those not in employment are in receipt of some sort of pension.
In a declining population there is also a lesser inclination to get married. A hundred and forty years ago, more than 63 per cent of men or women were married; today the respective figures are 56 per cent for men and 50 for women. The divorce rate has grown forty-fold in that period, going up from 0.07 to close on 3.0. People are also less philoprogenitive: at the end of the 19th century, there were on average five births per family, today the two-child family is the norm. At the same time, of course, the proportion of children born out of wedlock (pups conceived by stealth, in the phrase of the times) which was below eight per cent between 1876 and 1880, had grown to 29 per cent (more or less the EU average) by the year 2000.
There is virtually no sector of the economy in which employment patterns have not changed. The most marked change has been in agriculture. In 1900 more than 60 per cent of income earners derived their living from the land (including forestry). This has declined to 6-7 per cent. Industry and construction have taken up the slack. In a hundred years their share has grown from 12-13 per cent to 32-33 per cent. Telecommunications, commerce and transport have more than trebled, from 6 per cent to 20 per cent. Administration, education and health services have also shown a considerable increase-8 to 9 per cent early in the twentieth century, 26 per cent at its end. The full hundred per cent was made up then, as now, by "other services."
A hundred years ago around a fifth of income earners were women. The post-war "working husband-working wife" socialist family model also helped to put paid to this male preponderance. The ratio of women peaked in 1980, when more than 48 per cent were in employment. At present 44 to 45 per cent of those in employment are women. There have been other changes as well, one of them being as regards the oddity of unemployment figures: 35,000 unemployed were recorded by the trades unions in 1924, but a few years later only fifteen to twenty thousand jobless Hungarians lived in the Carpathian Basin (a figure that includes ethnic Hungarians in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia); then the Great Depression once again pushed up the number of jobless to above 30,000. This fell to below 18,000 immediately before the Second World War, and briefly rose again after 1945. Since the socialist system did not recognise unemployment-those who preferred to be jobbless in the artificially "overemployed" economy were criminalized as dangerous vagrants-the rate of unemployment that sprang up overnight following the liquidation of enterprises after the collapse of Communism came as a major shock. The number peaked at half a million in 1993. By the year 2000 this figure had declined to 263,000 that is, 6.4 per cent of the active workforce.
But even those who held down a job were not sure they were on a growth path. After the Second World War average wages and salaries only grew by fits and starts. In 1950 the average monthly take-home pay was 678 forints, though real wages grew until 1978, when the trend changed. They tended to decline until 1996: even the 13 per cent rise in real incomes between 1997 and 2000 did not fully compensate for the earlier dive. In 2000 real incomes were still 20 per cent below those of 1978. It should be said that the 1950 average income more or less corresponds to the take-home monthly pay packet of 55,785 forints in 2000. It would be interesting to know how much more or less that was than actual earnings in 2000.
The real value of pensions dropped even more steeply between the mid-eighties and the second half of the nineties, and though the trend has been reversed, growth has been modest indeed. The changing role of the state is indicated by the 95,000 in receipt of a state pension in 1924 growing to 3,000,000 by the year 2000, as a result of the 1952 pensions reform, subsequent changes in the system and an aging population. Those three million amount to 31 per cent of the population, whereas in 1950 the corresponding ratio was a mere 5.6 per cent.
Consumer habits have also changed. Fifty years ago, 40 per cent of incomes were spent on food, a little more than 10 per cent on clothing and close to a third on other goods and services. In 1998, barely a fifth of incomes were spent on food, a total of 2-3 per cent on clothing, and more than half on other goods and services. In conjunction, dietary habits have also changed. Compared to a hundred years ago, the average Hungarian buys one and half times as much meat and fish, two hundred eggs more a year, twice as much milk and milk products, ten times as much sugar, largely the same quantity of fats, fruit and vegetables, but only two thirds the quantity of cereals and potatoes and a third as much of pulses and oily seeds. The decline in real incomes in the eighties and nineties perhaps explains why the 1987 figures were 10-20 per cent higher than those for 1999.

There were changes in culture too. Between 1920 and 1928, annually between 1500 and 4000 titles were published, of which around a third could be described as literary works. Barring one or two minor fallbacks in the early nineties, this figure has steadily grown since 1950, and moves around nine to ten thousand at present. The size of editions has, however, radically declined. The print run for all books was more than 100 million in 1990, and fewer than 40 million in 2000. The explanation probably lies in the prompt end of direct state support and the resulting price explosion. Taste and demand have also changed. The proportion of scientific and technical books has grown to 40 per cent, literature now accounts for no more than a fifth of the market, and popular science books barely account for 13 per cent. On the other hand, visitors to museums have much greater choice. In 1925 there were only thirty-nine museums for them to visit, in 2000 eight hundred and twelve. The number of visitors reflects the trend. Seventy-five years ago 7 per cent of the population were museum goers, these days 99 per cent are.
It would seem, however, that greater leisure opportunities are not an effective anti-depressant. Suicide rates have grown compared to those of the 19th century. In the 1820s there were 19 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants within the Hungary of those times, in 1920 (in post-Trianon Hungary) there were 24, and this trend peaked in 1983, at 46. The trend then appeared to go into reverse: in 2000, 33 per 100,000 Hungarians committed suicide. Other mortality rates also changed somewhat. In 1948 cardiac complaints and malignant tumours headed the list. These still top the list, but they are no longer followed by tuberculosis, pneumonia and perinatal mortality. Cerebral sclerosis has moved up to third place from sixth. It is followed by non-natural deaths (accidents, suicide and murder) and by liver complaints, bronchitis, asthma, diabetes and kidney complaints, which were not in the top list fifty years ago.
Leisure has grown concurrently with life expectancy. Between 1977 and 1999 income-earning work and household duties diminished more or less by an hour and leisure was extended from 3 hours and 20 minutes to 4 hours and 17 minutes. It fits in with Western trends that people spend more than 60 per cent of the extra time available in front of the television set.
One could argue that there is every justification for relaxation even from the macroeconomic point of view. Although per capita GDP is still well below the EU average, in 2000 it was 13 to 14 times as high as a hundred years earlier. But that is still not enough for first place in the East Central European context. A per capita GDP of $10,870 may be three times that of the Ukraine and close to twice that of Romania, but it is only a few hundred dollars ahead of Slovakia and $5,000 behind Slovenia, not to mention Austria's $24,580, which is higher than the EU average. This historically high figure has had its collateral effects on consumption, and present household consumption is four times that of 1950. (The highest so far measured in Hungary, in 1987, has not so far been successfully equalled, let alone exceeded.)

The tourist industry has considerably contributed to the successes of the economy. It began with the riverboat which began to ply regularly between Pest and Vienna in 1830. In 1896, at the time of the Millenary Celebrations of the Hungarian Conquest, a total of twenty-five hotels and pensions were available in the capital. Forty years later their number had grown to 156, with 9,486 beds. Hotel construction accelerated in the eighties and nineties, with the emphasis on the luxury class. By the year 2000, hydro- and spa-hotels alone could cater to more than 9,000, and the total of available beds approached 100,000. There are another 220,000 or so provided by paying guest facilities (in rural areas as well), which used to be fully exploited and are fully exploited once again. Three hundred and eighty-three thousand foreign visitors came to Hungary in 1937. In the fifties this number fell to a few tens of thousands. Even the few who would venture here had obstacles put in their way by the Communist authorities. In the sixties restrictions were relaxed, the number of visitors soon reached the earlier level and, indeed, a dynamic growth ensued. The number of visitors exceeded five million in 1969 and peaked at 40 million in 1993, a few years after the end of communism. The present figure moves around an annual thirty million.
Such growth did not occur in the case of travel abroad by Hungarians. For a long time-because of restrictions on travel- the 1937 figure (220,000) was not exceeded. Numbers went up in the late fifties but -in almost all cases-the destination lay within the Comecon area. The introduction of what was called the world passport in 1988 was a tremendous boost. That year the frontiers were crossed thirteen million times by Hungarians, a record which has stood ever since. Hungarians travelling abroad still do so on more than ten million occasions every year.

Trips abroad have to be paid for out of what is left after you have paid your taxes. Constant changes in an impossibly complicated taxation system are no help. In 1868, after the Compromise between Austria and Hungary, three fifths of the income of the exchequer derived from direct taxes, which the nobility too had to pay after 1848 (land-, livestock-, house-, income- and personal earnings taxes), one fifth from excise dues (salt and tobacco), a tenth from a sales tax on beer, spirits and meat, and another tenth from various stamp and other dues and charges. In the mid 1870s the income and personal earnings tax were combined as a general income tax. The share of this and other direct taxes diminished, and that of various dues and charges grew. In 1916 a personal income and wealth tax was introduced, which accounted for one third of income in the next budget. Direct taxes, on the other hand, no longer amounted to even 25 per cent, consumer and drink taxes to 17, dues and charges to 15, and excise dues to 11 per cent. Between 1920 and 1924, the monetary unit, the Crown (korona), was devalued to less than a hundredth of its value, sales taxes grew, and there was a gigantic hyperinflation after the Second World War. In August 1946, 400, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 pengő were exchanged for just one forint, the new currency unit. For a short transitional period, when an additional tax on property and property accretion was collected to finance post-war reconstruction, the old items of taxation survived. After the nationalisation of banks and of large firms, these paid around 90 per cent of total taxes. In 1988 a value-added tax was introduced, and a personal income tax was reintroduced. A taxation structure, which continuously changed, undergoing refinement, in 1990 obtained 44-44 per cent of income from payments by enterprises and taxes connected with consumption, but by the year 2000 the contribution from economic organisations had declined to 16 per cent, that of consumption taxes had leapt to 58 per cent and the share of payments by individual taxpayers grew to 20 per cent.