Number of teenage pregnancies in Hungary still high, figures devastating compared to EU

"Statistics on teenage childbearing in Hungary are still staggering. In Hungary, around seventeen out of every one thousand teenage girls have a baby each year, while the EU average is around seven."

- Ildikó Husz, demographer and sociologist, senior fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (Társadalomtudományi Intézet) and lecturer at Budapest's Corvinus University told Népszava.

According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) the proportion of teens giving birth in 2022 was 16.7 thousandths – in some Western countries this is 2-4 thousandths while the EU average is 7 thousandths. Husz said that research shows that "early childbearing is clearly linked to lower social status", especially in the case of those with low educational backgrounds and poor economic status, living in rural areas and villages.

"But this is not a Roma issue," Husz added. According to KSH's research, 29% of mothers who gave birth young declared themselves as Roma, 55% as non-Roma, and the census shows that

the vast majority of Roma girls no longer have their first child in their teens.

"So there is no strong correlation between having children at a young age and ethnicity," Husz says. According to KSH data on underage pregnancies

• 20 percent did not finish primary school, while 67 percent completed eight grades at most;
• only 5 percent of underage mothers graduated from high school;
• 79 percent have never had a job;
• 65 percent live in underdeveloped areas and 84 percent in municipalities with less than 20 000 inhabitants.

"Many of these girls did not get pregnant intentionally, but research has also shown that the vast majority of these cases ended in abortion," said Husz, adding that a large proportion of young mothers in Hungary choose to have a child at that age.

Husz explained that the reason Hungary is lagging behind is that "in many other countries, early childbearing does not have nearly as negative an impact on the life of the mother – and sometimes the father – as it does in our country." In Hungary, being a school drop-out and early childbearing are closely linked, while in other countries this is much less the case nowadays.