One thousand or ten million? "The needy" in various groups

One basic decision to be made for the distribution of welfare assistance is how to assign the entitlement criteria. This also determines the number of those concerned and thus the extent of community expenditures. These principles are not only manifold in theory; but Hungarian practice also applies various methods in parallel. This study reviews the most important theoretically possible types of approach applied today, primarily on the basis of data supplied by the Hungarian Statistical Office and Tárki. The main task for the analysis is to determine the benefit requirements of how many people (households) should be taken into account when applying certain criteria, i.e. what multiplication factors can be assigned to the various political decisions regulating the macro-economic expenditures, also taking into consideration the advantages and drawbacks of the different approaches.

Esély (Chance) year 17, volume 4, July 2006 pp. 3-20