Hungary

Ethnicity, Literacy, and Health Care

Over 90 percent of the population is of Hungarian ethnicity, and many ethnic Hungarians live outside the country's borders due to the redrawing of national boundaries after wars. The term Mother Hungary is used to refer to the nation in a spiritual sense and includes all ethnic Hungarians regardless of geographic residence: for instance, proposals to allow ethnic Hungarians in bordering countries to seek employment, education, and medical care in Hungary were referred to in the popular press as “extending Mother Hungary” across national borders. About half of Hungarians are Roman Catholic, about 20 percent are allied with other Christian churches, and the remainder follows other religions or are unaffiliated.

Literacy is almost universal for both men (99.5 percent) and women (99.3 percent), with most children attending school to at least the age of 15 or 16 years of age. The per capita income is about two-thirds of the EU-25 average at $19,800. The state spends $348 per capita on health care, comprising 7.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 70 percent of the total expenditures on health. The remaining 30 percent is primarily private, out-of-pocket expenditures: private, prepaid health plans are rare and constitute only 1.3 percent of the total expenditure on health.

Standards of maternal and child health care in Hungary are quite high. Childhood immunization rates are 99–100 percent for most common diseases, and 68 percent of women use modern methods of contraception. Data concerning prenatal care and births attended by skilled attendants were not available, but the maternal death rate is extremely low (11 per 100,000 live births in 2000) as is the stillbirth rate (6 per 1,000 total births in 2000) and neonatal mortality rate (6 per 1,000 live births in 2000).

Save the Children, an international organization devoted to improving maternal and child health, placed Hungary in its Tier I or most developed countries, where it ranks 26 out of 41 countries (tied with the United States), 24 in the Women's Index, and 26 in the Children's Index: on all three indices, it ranks higher than many former Eastern Bloc countries, but lower than most western European countries. Suicide and attempted suicide have historically been high in Hungary relative to other countries, leading to specific studies of women who attempted suicide while pregnant; however, Hungarian suicide rates are substantially lower today.

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