Social care protection

Over 1 million people received the family allowance based on subjective rights in 2023. The role of child care benefit among family protection benefits is growing, thanks also to the increased possibility to work while receiving child care benefit. Almost 117,000 children were registered at risk, of whom 30,000 minors were taken into protection by the guardianship authorities, which is the highest number in the last 10 years. The focus shifted from children’s home to foster care, with a significant increase in the role of churches as maintainers.

The yearbook provides an overview of Hungary's demographic, social and economic processes, environmental characteristics and their changes over time, with the help of tens of thousands of data of 500 tables, graphs and maps. Innovatively, the Tourism, catering chapter in the volume includes the gross receipts of tourist accommodation establishments by type of accommodation. Another change is that this year the Regional data chapter already presents territorial data by tourism area, giving greater emphasis to tourist destinations.

Geopolitical tensions continued to overshadow economic developments in 2023, with the gross domestic product falling by 0.9%. Inflationary pressures gradually eased, but the 17.6% annual increase in consumer prices led to a decline in real earnings and consumption, and negatively affected investment decisions. Despite the economic difficulties, employment has reached a record high. In 2023, the number of deaths and births continued to fall, in addition to the decrease in the number of women of childbearing age.

In Hungary, 2,423 thousand people were in receipt of a pension or other pension-type benefits in early 2024. Of those eligible, 76% received old-age pension over retirement age.

Datasets from the Dissemination Database regarding settlements and Budapest’s districts have been updated with 2022 data, as such settlement and district related data for 2022 are available since 31 August, concerning, among others, data on basic child welfare provision, long- and short-term residential social institutions and social benefits.

The average daily number of sick pay recipients was exceptionally high in November and December 2020, approaching the seasonal trend in January and merging into that in February and March. In March, 2.2% more people (71.8 thousands) were on sick leave per day than in the same period last year. The average daily number of employed sick pay recipients - nearly nine tenths of all sick pay recipients - rose by 2.9%, while the average daily number of self-employed sick pay recipients fell by 3.1%.