Press release on the poverty and income data, 06/05/2025
In response to the news published in the press regarding poverty and income data, HCSO continues to reject accusations of deliberate manipulation of data, as it always acts in accordance with the legal provisions and methodological norms in its tasks.
As in all its data production, HCSO acts with the utmost care in the case of poverty data, too, adhering to professional and ethical standards, and rejects any accusations that would suggest any intentional influence on the data. Eurostat validates the EU-SILC data every year and publishes the domestic data after validation.
In the case of the data survey on poverty and income (EU-SILC), the willingness of the population to respond is decreasing in Hungary, similarly to international trends, and as part of this, more and more households are not answering questions about the amount of income. Keeping in mind and in accordance with international legal requirements for data collection, HCSO supplements the missing data and corrects the incorrect data.
For the replacement and data correction procedure, HCSO has been using administrative data from the National Tax and Customs Administration and the Hungarian State Treasury since 2018. The procedure applied between 2018 and 2022 played a decisive role in the accumulation of identical income values. In 2023, in order to clarify the income distribution HCSO refined the methodology of the replacement procedure, the essence of which was to better differentiate the data gaps and to divide them into smaller, more homogeneous groups. At the same time, EU-SILC is a sample survey which requires probability methods and procedures for processing and deriving the results. We optimise the methods used to process incoming data according to the statistically most precise and reliable definition of the main EU-SILC indicators.
As previously announced, HCSO is also carrying out a major revision of the poverty data collection in the first half of 2025, using the data from the 2022 census, including a review of the distribution of income data retrospectively, going back to 2018. HCSO notified Eurostat of this intention in March 2024 and, in response to their question, also notified TARKI of its intention as early as 2023. As a result of the major revision, the changes are not expected to have a significant impact on the development of poverty, and their aim is to further improve accuracy. The planned major revision and its timing are independent of the news published in the press.
Following the major revision – after Eurostat has checked and validated the data – HCSO plans to hold a professional forum involving a wide range of data users after 30 June 2025, which will also provide an opportunity for professional dialogue.
Until the publication of the revised data, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office will be guided by the above.
Hungarian Central Statistical Office
H-1024 Budapest, Keleti Károly u. 5-7. Tel./Phone: (+36-1) 345-6000
Postacím/Postal address: P.O.Box 51 Budapest H-1525
http://www.ksh.hu