Hungary – among the TOP 20 family-friendly countries

According to the analysis released by UNICEF ​​this Thursday, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Portugal are the most family-friendly countries. The international organisation listed the most developed countries on the basis of four indicators where Hungary was ranked in 16th place, leaving all the other regional countries behind.

Within the framework of the analysis, 31 rich countries were reviewed by UNICEF considering four indicators – length of paid maternity leave; length of paid paternity leave; the proportion of organised supervision of children under 3 years; the proportion of organised supervision in the case of children between three years and pre-school age – in order to assess how family-friendly the country is.

Hungary finished in the middle of the list, sharing the 16th place with Lithuania. Among the region’s countries, only Slovenia managed to precede our country, while the rest of Central and Eastern European countries were ranked in the last third of the list.

Out of the four indicators, Hungary performs the best in the case of paid maternity leave, as the projected total salary of absence comes out to a period of 72 weeks, which is the second highest after Estonia. (In the first two years of maternity leave, mothers receive ‘GYED’ support which is 70% of the salary being maximised; followed by HUF 28,500 financial support which is provided up to the child’s third birthday.)

As the Hungarian news portal Portfolio describes, it is important to mention that these figures were examined in 2016; so, changes might have occurred since then in the ratio of children’s participation in nurseries and kindergartens; and it is also worth noting that the highlighted four indicators do not cover all the elements of family policies.

Source: portfolio.hu