The number of people living in serious financial difficulty has shrunk by half, it has been revealed.
During an interview on Karc FM on Monday, Piroska Szalai, a labor market expert, cited Eurostat data as the source of the impressive figure.
Szalai explained that by definition, indigents are those people, who, apart from covering their everyday needs, cannot afford at least four out of the measured nine life situations - including paying their rent, household utility bills, any unexpected costs or even a week-long vacation a year.
The expert recalled that in 2012, 2.7 million such people were living in Hungary. By 2016, also based on Eurostat figures, this number decreased by 1.3 million. Now only 1.4 million people struggle on the poverty line.
The proportion of indigents within society fell below 14 percent, which has been the best result since the introduction of the Eurostat surveys in 2004. According to Szalai, this process is set to continue.
According to the labor market expert, there are several reasons behind the drop. Among others, the fall of unemployment and the ongoing wage increases. It’s also important that the government has taken out foreign currency loans and provided much easier access to borrowing.
Moreover, the reduction of utility prices, the social measurements of the government and the changing monetary policy, which enables low inflation, also helped for more than one million people to find a way out of poverty.