Hungarian economy is weak in the EU, but is it considered weak outside of it?

The Hungarian economy and living standards are not soaring high. But what if we make an unusual comparison with countries outside of the EU?

Hungary has a peculiar position in the European Union. Despite being part of the bloc for almost 20 years now, living standards are still somewhat behind the European average. But what if, for a change, we compare Hungary with the rest of the world? That’s exactly what napi.hu did.

Strong European field

If we compare Hungary with other EU member states (plus EFTA members and the UK), in terms of average net wages, Hungary is only staying ahead of Romania and Bulgaria. According to IMF data, Hungary is still ahead of Croatia in terms of GDP per capita.

This picture is not that obviously bleak if we compare Hungary with the six non-EU member Balkan countries (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, and northern Macedonia). Belarus, Moldova, and now more than ever Russia and Ukraine are still lagging behind Hungary.

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What about the rest of the world?

Hungary’s geographical and natural limitations mean that it cannot compete with a number of countries on purely economic grounds. For a more fair comparison, we must exclude the city-states, such as Singapore, oil countries such as Saudi Arabia, and small tourist paradises that have based their national economies on a single sector, tourism.

As napi.hu mentions at the top of the list, compared to Hungary, the world’s largest economy, the United States of America still has huge economic advantage. The same is true for the much more developed former British colonies that were sparsely populated before colonialism: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The other group of countries with clearly better economic performance are the highly industrialised Far Eastern countries of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which have advanced massively since the Second World War.

There are two more countries, one with a higher and one with a lower GDP than the Hungarian economy: Israel and Uruguay. What these two countries have in common is that they spend a larger percentage of GDP on education and healthcare compared to Hungary.

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Source: napi.hu