Disaggregated Household Incomes in Hungary Based on the Comparative Analysis of the Reweighted Household Surveys of 2010 and 2015

Abstract

In the period 2010–2015, the Hungarian employment rate recorded an outstanding increase even by European standards. During this period, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office recorded a 9 per cent increase in the number of employees, coupled with a 15.5 per cent rise in net real wages. This study presents the evolution of these indicators broken down by income groups. In addition to number of employees and labour incomes, changes in the total compensation of pension and social benefit recipients are also discussed in the study. Calculations are based on the 2010 and 2015 data waves of the household budget statistics. One disadvantage of using these data, however, is that they are distorted along the income distribution due to the phenomenon that high earners are typically represented by a low number of observations. The study presents a two-step recalibration procedure with previously unused cohort formation that addresses the aforementioned coverage deficiency with adjustment to external data sources. The material well-being of different household income groups can be tracked in the database produced by the applied method, and the macroeconomic indicators can be supplemented by pieces of distribution information. According to the results defined as the difference between the two years’ data under review, the employment growth in the interim period was determined by the employment of the two lower income quintiles. In the assessment of social benefits, with the limited information available, the chosen tool does not provide a comprehensive view of the changes in these income categories; therefore, the quantified differences between the reweighted sample years’ data should be considered with caution. Broken down by income group, real wage indices exhibited considerable fluctuations.