HDI rank: Is it better to live in Slovakia and Croatia than in Hungary?

The Human Development Index (HDI) compares all the countries in the world based on multiple regards. These include aspects such as life expectancy, the average duration of education or GDP. By these standards, the index provides a picture of how good life is in a certain country. But how well, or rather how poorly is Hungary doing right now?

Life expectancy

As we can see from the summary of Penzcentrum.hu, currently Switzerland is at the top with an HDI of 0.962 percent. Hungary among the world’s 191 recognised countries is the 46th with an HDI of 0.846 percent. The life expectancy at birth is about 74.2 years in Hungary. By this metric, Hungary is only slightly in front of countries like Romania or Serbia, where the life expectancy is only 74.2 respectively. In this case, Hungary performing very poorly as in Switzerland people are expected to live 84 years. Even in neighbouring countries such as Austria or Slovenia, it stands at 80.7 years.

School attendance

In many European countries, the duration of school attendance is very high. In Belgium, for example, people spend on average 19.6 years in education. In Austria and Slovenia, it is 17.7 years respectively, but in Hungary, it is only 15 years. In this regard, Hungary is doing very poorly only being ahead of countries like Slovakia (14.5 years), Serbia (14.4 years) and Romania (14.2 years). We have to keep in mind that these are the results from 2021 so the future of education might even be in a worse situation by now.

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Gross Domestic Product

Hungary is not doing very well in this category either only getting ahead of countries like Turkey, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. The GDP per capita in Hungary is currently HUF 13,654,946 or about EUR 33,591. This pales in comparison to the list leader Switzerland where the GDP per capita is HUF 27,862,199 or EUR 68,541. By these numbers, we can see that Hungary is not doing so poorly in global terms. Compared to Serbia, a relatively poor country in Europe, Hungary is doing well. There the GDP per capita is only HUF 7,963,754 or EUR 19,591. However, compared to EU trends, the future is not really bright for Hungary.

Human Development in Hungary

Now the greatest problem is that Hungary is in a relapse in terms of HDI. From 1990 to 2010, Hungary was on a steep climb going from an HDI of only 0.72 percent to 0.82 percent. Of course, the closer you get to the top the harder it gets to further improve, so a slow down was expected. The growth continued right until the peak in 2019 when HDI started to fall. In just two years, Hungary went from 0.853 percent to 0.846 percent. This means the country reached the level of 2018 in terms of HDI.

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Source: Penzcentrum.hu