Változó falvaink

Changing Villages in Hungary

(Typology of the system of rural settlements in Hungary
at the turn of the millennium)

In 2005 there were 3,145 existing administrative units in Hungary,
among them 274 possessed the legal status of a town (there are already
289 a towns on January 01, 2007). 35% of the population, more than 3.5
million people live in villages. In most cases in Hungary administrative
units equal the actual units of sett lements, i.e. the villages. The average
population in the villages is 1,230, while 60% of the sett lements have
fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. (According to the latest census result from
2001, the smallest village had only 12 residents, while the population of
the largest one exceeded 16,000.)
In 1989-1990 in Hungary a “constitutional change of regime” took
place, which did not only mean a political change, but structural changes
in the society and the economy as well as in operation also started: the
socialist, monolithic, one-party social and political system was replaced
by a capitalist, pluralist market-economy, based on private property, and
its social and political institutions (multi-party system, parliamentary
democracy, civil legal system, etc.).
This change in the regime had a far-reaching eff ect on the villages of
the country:
while previously the life of the villages was defi ned by external
factors – budgetary support, administrative rank, their position in
the sett lement development plans, state investments, etc. – aft er 1990
villages entered “the market of sett lements”. Their position, their
pathway was determined by their geographic location and transport
links, natural and environmental conditions, labor-market status,
the condition of the local society and their purchasing power among
several other factors.
the transition to market economy, the changes in the economic
environment – e.g. the dissolution of the economic integration of the
former socialist countries, the increasing competition on the market
– was followed by a recession and changes in the spatial economic
structure. Most of the mines and industrial units operating in the
villages were closed down. Agricultural cooperatives which were
of high priority in the socialist era were dissolved or crumbled, and
production takes place on private farms again.
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as a result of the “change” or the recession, the number of wage-earners
in the industrial sector decreased with 540,000, and the economic
activity also fell back (the proportion of the economically active
inhabitants in 1970 was 48.3, in 1990 43.6, and in 2001 36.2%.) In the
meantime the occupational patt ern of the villages also restructured
remarkably: the number of agricultural workers decreased to 11%.
These changes in the status of the Hungarian villages triggered the
authors (that aft er 1982, when they classifi ed the types of the villages
in the era of “mature socialism”) to reveal the processes that formulate
contemporary villages and to establish a new typology. Since today
numerous contradicting factors defi ne the status of the villages and
their types in the structure of the sett lements, we based our research
on a factor- and cluster-analysis. The 27 variables we used refl ect the
following components of the status and the condition of the villages:
natural resources, agricultural conditions
the status of villages in the structure of sett lements
the economic role of villages
transport links
basic public services of the villages with institutions like elementary
school, GP surgery, pharmacy, post offi ce, parsonage, etc.
the direction and pace of development
The basis of the typology was an eight-factor version which we
obtained from the principal component analysis.
The main result of the factor-analysis is that while in the socialist era
in the diff erentiation of the villages the size of the sett lement and the
quality of the basic public services played the main role, followed by the
occupational patt ern of the inhabitants and the degree of commuting
(i.e. the labor market situation), today the main determinant of this is
labor market conditions and its factors.
The structure of the factors based on our calculations is as follows:
name of the factor eigenvalue-level
1. Labor market conditions – “development” 4.46
2. Size of the sett lement – quality of basic public services 3.06
3. Demographic characteristics 3.00
4. Direction and dynamics of the changes in the population 2.02
5. Occupational structure, commuting 1.98
6. Proportion of tourism 1.70
7. Rate of the population in the outskirt zone 1.68
8. Agricultural conditions 1.03
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So, for instance, the fi rst factor was based on the following variables:
the ratio of economically active inhabitants, the number of cars and
the number of enterprises per 1,000 persons, the proportion of people
possessing high school diploma in the population over 18, the rate of the
unemployed, fl ats with 4 or more rooms, the number of businesses for
1,000 inhabitants and the distance of towns.
The values of the indicators concentrated in the fi rst factor, – the socalled
factorscore values – show remarkable spatial diff erences, marking
the dynamically developing regions of the country (Northwest Hungary,
the surroundings of Budapest).
When defi ning the second factor, primarily the number of population,
the range of institutions of basic public services, the size of the nearby
sett lements and the number of commuters were considered. (This last
one shows a close reciprocity with the size of the sett lements: the diverse
economy of larger towns att racts a larger number of in-commuters.) In
our research of 1982 the indicators determining this factor used to belong
to the “dominant” factors. So compared to the 1970s and ’80s, the role that
the size of the sett lement and basic public services played has decreased.
For determining the typology of the sett lements we used a cluster
analysis and the MacQeen-algorithm; where the input data were the
factorscore values. From the numerous possible variations of the cluster
analysis we decided on a set of 25 clusters. By merging the clusters we
created 7 main- and 14 sub-types. These are the following:
I. Sett lements in the inner zone of the agglomeration
I.1. developed sett lements with a large number of inhabitants
and of high prestige (34 sett lements)
I.2. sett lements with medium size and small population (68
sett le ments)
II. Growing sett lements in the outer zone of the agglomeration
(growing population, high ratio of out-commuters and industrial
workers) (218 sett lements)
III. Villages with small and moderately decreasing population (482
sett lements)
III.1. villages with residential role, a favorable labor market
position and stagnating population (273)
III.2. medium-size villages with an average labor market position
and of mixed roles (209)
IV. Villages with touristic role, spa resorts and thermal baths (38 sett lements)
V. Medium-sized sett lements with unfavorable labor market conditions,
sometimes with a remarkable agricultural role or outskirt
population (449 sett lements)
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V.1. medium-sized sett lements with unfavorable labor market
conditions and stagnating population (379)
V.2. scatt ered sett lements with an agricultural role (70)
VI. Small villages with good labor market conditions and stable population
serving as residential and with a touristic role (675 sett lements)
VII. Small villages with bad labor market conditions, decreasing population,
in an unfavorable position with a distorted demographic social
structure (911 sett lements)
VII.1. small villages without basic public services, with decreasing
population and commuting inhabitants (432)
VII.2. small villages with mixed roles, with decreasing population
and without basic public services (105)
VII.3. small villages with rather unfavorable labor market
conditions but with an increasing population and a
demographic structure with an increasing youth rate (191)
VII.4. small sett lements with an agricultural role, unfavorable labor
market conditions and radically decreasing population (183)
Evaluating the results of the typology, we can state that:
The results and eff ects of the rapid and strong changes aft er 1990 in
the (social and economic) lives of the villages – de-industrialization,
dissolution of the majority of agricultural cooperatives, fundamental
changes in the structure of the labor market, re-establishing of the
self-government system, technical development, etc. – are still not
harmonized, thus several simultaneous and contradicting processes
can be observed: for example in some villages demographic and
social processes with reversed values are present. In some cases this
“harmonization” makes the diff erent types hard to interpret.
At the same time, the total stock of villages has undergone a certain
homogenization. For example the ratio of out-commuters compared to
the number of wage-earners in every village and village type is rather
high, it amounts to or exceeds 60-70%. So nowadays this formerly
strong diff erentiating factor plays a modest role in the typology,
the majority of our villages serve as an area for living (62% of the
economically active population is commuting). The disappearance of
mining villages and industrial sett lements (partly because they were
declared towns, partly because the mines and factories were closed
down) also resulted in the relative homogeneity of the villages. The
decrease in agricultural production (considering the number and rate
of wage-earners working in the agricultural sector) has suppressed
agriculture as a primary activity among the determining factors.
(Today the old equation of “village = sett lement with an agricultural
activity” is no longer valid.)
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While on the basis of the hard data, a certain unifi cation can be
observed inside the stock of villages, the status of the local society,
their sociological features, the diff erences deriving from the diff erent
fi nancial statuses – e.g. the environment formed by the ways of
recreation, the amount spent on “culture”, tastes, demands, fi nancial
background; the general look of the village, the lifestyle of the
inhabitants, their scale of values, their dressing habits, etc. – along
with the traditions the inhabitants preserve, the social layers of the
villages and several, non-factual factors generate a rather diverse
“formula”. The diversity of the soft data – from the “elite” residential
quarters in the suburbs, to the unemployed people of the villages
stricken by demographic erosion, scraping along on social benefi ts
or casual work – is highly remarkable. However, obviously, these
diff erences appear only indirectly in our database.
Thus, no matt er how big a database, what kind of mathematicalstatistical
apparatus we worked with, only the main coordinates
of the villages and their phenomena transformed and condensed
into data could be observed when sett ing up the typology. Still, the
result of the innumerable possible combination of the innumerable
possible characteristics is that each and every village is unique
and irreproductable. This must be taken into consideration at the
evaluation of our fi ndings.
At the same time in the prevalence of certain types of villages
some regularity can be detected. The frequency distribution of the
prevalence of certain types of villages (as it can be seen in Table 54)
and the diff erent “mix” of the diff erent types create regions with a
character of their own. On Figure 44 we marked the parts and regions
of the country in which certain homogeneity can be observed in the
frequency distribution and the rate of “trade” in the diff erent types
of villages.