How many people will live in Hungary in 2050?

Hungary’s population is falling. It is estimated that by 2050, the population will be only 8.5 million, compared to 8.8 million in a more optimistic scenario.

Fewer and fewer Hungarians

As we wrote earlier, there were fewer children born than people who died in Hungary in October 2022. This trend has been in place for a long time, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker.

On Monday, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences held a mini-conference on statistics and futurology. Csaba G. Tóth, former senior research fellow at the Population Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), spoke at the conference, writes 444.hu.

Tóth and his research colleague Csilla Obádovics calculated how many people will be living in Hungary in 2050. They also looked at the age structure of the population and how the data for each region will develop.

Read alsoHungarian currency: will EUR/HUF be 450 or 350 sooner?

Not a forecast, but a calculation

At the beginning, Csaba G. Tóth and Csilla Obádovics stated that they are statisticians. They don’t make forecasts, they do different calculations and on the basis of these, they draw up scenarios.

The total population decreased by six percent between 1990 and 2019. The seven Hungarian regions were divided into four groups. In Northern Hungary, Southern Transdanubia and Southern Great Plain, the population decline is between 10 and 15 percent. In the researchers’ baseline model, the population will fall to 8.5 million by 2050. This represents a 13 percent reduction compared to 2020, double the reduction of the last 30 years.

In a high fertility scenario, the population would be 8.8 million in less than 30 years, and 8.2 million without migration, 24.hu reports.

“It’s almost impossible to reverse that, and I put it very mildly at the time,” Tóth said. The weight loss is unstoppable, the only thing you can do is slow it down.

The Hungarian elderly are one of the oldest societies in the region. This will fundamentally determine population trends in the coming decades. The 110,000 births per year needed to maintain the population is an impossible category, experts say.

Read alsoCensus in Hungary: where have 400 thousand Hungarians gone?

Source: 444.hu, 24.hu