Different periods in the social policy of Hungary have had an impact on the current political attitudes towards poverty and provision. The pre-war Hungarian social protection system had a social insurance system that was by and large on a par with the European conservative regimes, and a politics of poverty that was rather mean and lean. Coverage, standards, access, and take-up or non-take-up did not become topics of public discourse. Social policy had a questionable status throughout the decades called hereafter state socialism. “Kadarism” developed the large social policy systems based on full employment and prices subsidies for “basic needs”. Despite the absence of an autonomous social policy, the system arrived to practically full coverage in health, education, pensions, child benefits and institutions with some concern on access and exit (one should note that housing was never considered a part of this system). Meanwhile provisions for special needs, for deprived or needy groups, and for individual troubles never became central concerns. Public awareness, public discourse, concepts and measurements remained underdeveloped in case of poverty. The issues of adequacy of standards, of TU ad NTU of assistance-type provisions were ignored.

The “great transformation” in 1989/1990 reintroduced market and democracy. Alongside freedom and the rule of law, inequalities and poverty rapidly increased. The social policy answered were marked (besides path dependency) by neo-liberal efforts to privatization, marketisation, and to cut back the state. Perhaps half of the population have been profiting from the changes, another half have been losing out. Old and new poverty called for new measures. The laws were created, but the former concerns, particularly weak rights and low standards have survived. Means-tested benefits have remained the step-child of social policy. There are hardly any official statistics, the issues of adequacy, TU and NTU are still not on the political agenda. The EU put the issue of poverty and exclusion more forcefully on the agenda. Yet the concerns with the economy, low employment and budget deficits jeopardize the social objectives, particularly real concern allowing for more funds to combat poverty and exclusion.

History explains the late emergence of awareness in policy making about poverty, the flaws of the social assistance system, issues of rights, access, and NTU. The second part of Chapter 1 explains in more detail some aspects of this slow evolution, such as the unclear nature of social rights. It also presents the available information about the effective role of means-tested benefits pointing out basic uncertainties due to scarce data. There are controversial findings about the sums spent on means-tested assistance, about the number and rate of the households or persons covered, and about the precision of targeting. Some sociological findings about the efficiency of assistance are also presented, pointing out that about half of the potentially needy do not get access to social assistance, and that the poverty of those who get assistance is hardly alleviated. The problem is not targeting but rather the low standards, ongoing weak rights and discretion, and many other bad administrative practices.


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