The Human Development Index in rural Hungary: territorial inequalities

Obádovics, Csilla – Kulcsár, László

The Human Development Index (HDI) of UNDP has aroused wide interest and discussion among researchers and policy makers. HDI is generally used for measuring national performance with regard to human welfare and development. It combines indicators of income, life expectancy and education into a single dimension.

The article explains the application of the HDI methodology at micro-regional level, and the correlation between HDI and several variables: rurality, unemployment, level of physical infrastructure, density of entrepreneurship, age distribution and migration.

At the time of investigations the national average of HDI in Hungary was 0.613. Only one micro-region reached the lower limit which is internationally considered to be a high value. The Nyírbátor micro-region was at the bottom, with a very low value of 0.133, which is less than 22 percent of the national average, and only 16 percent of the analogous value for Gyõr which is at the top.

The value of HDI and rural character are in close correlation to each other.

More than 90% of the micro-regions with a low HDI value belong to the group of predominantly rural regions.

The rural character of a given micro-region and the development level of its human resources are also correlated to the unemployment rate.

There is an interaction effect between HDI and rurality. This suggests that the positive effects of HDI on the analysed indicators are intensified by the level of urbanisation and the negative effects of rurality are intensified by a low level of HDI.

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