Asked erroneously - Scale
“Child poverty is abolished—except, of course, for the ever-inconvenient Roma.”
“I honestly think there is not one single child in Hungary who is not reached by family support (…). Let’s take it out but we should look at the breakdowns - what the case actually looks like. Where does it stand geographically. Where does it stand ethnically. Are we talking about Roma children, or Hungarian children, kids from Budapest or from the countryside?” - are the questions by Egon Rónai addressed to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán batted away, somewhat timidly. The subject of child poverty arose on TV after sixteen uninterrupted years in power, on the 11th of November, 2025. There was a moment of hesitation before Rónai remarked, “Roma children are also Hungarian children.”
But there is even worse news.
Although it is clear by any given statistics that most Roma people are also poor, it should surprise absolutely no one - neither in the studio nor in front of the screens - that the overwhelming majority of the poor in Hungary today are, in fact, not Roma. Another fact is that both Roma and non-Roma poor people have children as well. Hungarian audience learned the next day from Tények (“Facts” - an ironic title, but let’s leave that aside for now) that “in his interview, the reporter, Egon Rónai, asked erroneously about child poverty.” The journalist asked incorrectly. The intellectual father - pardon me, mother, since the Fundamental Law is attentive to such matters - of this revelation is Prime Ministerial Chief Advisor Piroska Szalai.
The interview with the Prime Minister did not touch on the tiny detail that Hungary’s child poverty figures suddenly appeared to have doubled overnight, after the Central Statistical Office retroactively corrected the data series. Those series that were previously thought to bear signs of cosmetic touch-ups. The numbers that independent statisticians pointed out to journalists in the Spring of 2025, stating that they contained misleading information. It is a matter of argument whether it happened intentionally or through computational anomalies, but it is factual that the numbers misled the Hungarian public. These numbers stated that child-poverty indicators in Hungary are favourable even by EU comparison. According to the updated data, among those under 18 not 11.5 percent but 18 percent lived in poverty in 2019, and not 9.5 percent but 20.9 percent in 2020. In the following years the discrepancy was smaller (possibly fewer children were born in the families belonging to the affected “sub-breakdowns,” but that we do not know). As I should not fall into the sin of posting incorrectly: Chief Advisor Piroska Szalai underlines repeatedly that this was not cosmetic manipulation but a methodological anomaly. Any claim to the contrary, according to her, is aimed at the deliberate discrediting of the Statistical Office - naturally by the vile political opposition.
We must also note that even by the corrected numbers Hungary is doing fairly well as far as child poverty is in question. But is it not itself a methodological blunder, dear Piroska, that the poverty indicators used are, by definition, distortions? According to Eurostat data, for example, a higher proportion of people in Sweden and Luxemburg are exposed to the risk of poverty and social exclusion than in Hungary. Wouldn’t it be worth explaining how that is possible? Unless we assume that more elderly people (mostly women) living alone freeze to death each winter in their unheated, crumbling houses than in Hungary; more people beg on the streets; more children run around in clothing unsuitable for the season than in the Hungarian documentary film Dubai (which I warmly recommend, freely available on YouTube); also more children’s parents are unable to pay for the antibiotics when the children fall ill in. If that is not the case, then what on earth might be?
One possible explanation is that the poverty statistics in question measures so-called relative poverty. That is, it gauges who is exposed to this degree of steep deprivation in relation to the general standard of living of the society they live in. Let me help you out here, dear Piroska: if the general standard of living in a society is beneath the frog’s backside, then the poverty threshold will certainly be so low as well. And that particular threshold is so low in Hungary, by EU comparison, that if we were to compare the average Hungarian standard of living to the combined EU poverty threshold, it would turn out that the majority of the Hungarian population (yes, more than 50 percent) is in fact exposed to the risk of poverty and social exclusion. If, again, we were to compare to the combined EU-data. More simply put: the majority of the population in Hungary would be happy to be poor in Sweden or Luxemburg. Prime Minister Orbán Viktor promised to return to the TV studio where the reporter asked erroneously after he has prepared to answer questions on child poverty in more detail. I have high hopes and try to stay optimistic regarding the methodological anomalies to be raised. Let us hope the Prime Minister prepares to answer that particular problem, too.
Szubkontra / Balázs Zsuzsanna is publishing opinion pieces, interviews both written and in podcast form financed completely by crowdfunding. If you like my articles, please subscribe.