Family of four can subsist on EUR 816 a month in Hungary, says stats office

Budapest, June 24 (MTI) – A family of two parents and two children in Hungary needed 253,000 forints (EUR 816) a month for their subsistence last year, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) reported on Wednesday.

According to the report Subsistence Levels 2014, presented at a press conference, a family of one adult and one child could live on 144,000 forints (EUR 464) a month, while a pensioner living on their own could manage with 80,000 forints (EUR 258).

The report said that over 35 percent of Hungary’s households lived beyond subsistence levels. Zsolt Nemeth, KSH’S deputy head, said however that “the figures in fact do not reflect the level of subsistence but the level of a decent, modest living”.

Nemeth said that KSH’s subsistence level calculations are “less suitable to measure poverty” because the group of those living under subsistence levels is “too heterogeneous”. The report, in its current format, cannot be used as a basis for social policy decisions and will be discontinued, he added. He also said that the KSH would introduce a new index to measure the group of “people with the hardest lives”.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters