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• Prognosis of the Roma population in Hungary by region till 2061

  39-74

  Laszlo Hablicsek

  Maria Hablicsekne Richter

  Tamas Langi

  Views:

  967

  In our paper we try to give an overall picture about the countrywide and regional demographic characteristics of the Hungarian Roma population, to make a roll-forward calculation of the next decades until 2061 by region. It indicates the actuality of the study that in the last decades the population of the Hungarian Roma minority and its rate according to the whole Hungarian population permanently and materially increased. In the next decades in both further growth is expected, but the speed of this growth will be slower and slower. The fertility and the mortality of the Roma population will decrease, life expectancy will increase, these result in the increase of the rate of the aged population. Out estimation indicates that until 2061 the age pyramid of the gypsies’ changes, it will be more and more similar to the present one of the whole Hungarian population.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: C82, J11, J13, J19

• Unworthy poverty as social relations

  43-60

  Wolfgang Aschauer

  Eva Malovics

  Views:

  426

  The paper deals with recent discourses on poverty, exemplified by the case of Hungarian Romany community. For this purpose we first deduce from the theoretical framework of the underclass three way of viewing extreme poverty: the political-economic type that traces poverty back to developments of the whole society; the culturalistic type in which poverty is the result of certain behavioural deficiencies (the “culture”) of the poor; and the interdependency type that regards poverty as induced by factors in the society as a whole and perpetuated by poverty specific cultural elements of the poor themselves.
  In the second part of the study we discuss three fields of discourse with respect to the question of which of the mentioned types can be found there. In the field of social sciences it is preeminently the interdependency type which occurs, probably because of its capability to link many, even heterogeneous, observations. In public discourse – analyzed by considering an internet debate and two so-called scandals – the culturalistic type dominates: Romanies are poor, because they have Romany cultural (behavioural) deficiencies. The Romanies themselves mainly use elements of the political-economic type, explaining poverty in terms of general impoverishment, regional neglect, and group discrimination.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: I32, J15, J16, O15