Although death rates have decreased in Hungary since 1985, life expectancy remains low by European standards, particularly among Romani people. Almost half the deaths are caused by cardiovascular disease. A tax on some high-sugar foods, introduced in 2011, has encountered opposition from the confectionery trade. Drinking remains a major health problem, while smoking prevalence has greatly decreased. Health, in general, is poorer in the southern and eastern parts of the country.
In 2016 Hunbisco produced a critical report on the implementation of the sugar tax which was introduced in Hungary in 2011. It reported that the consumption of products subject to the sugar tax had decreased. They argued that manufacturers now have a smaller budget to explore healthier alternatives to sugar. Innovation and new marketing initiatives have reduced since 2011. The effect of the health tax, in addition to 27% VAT, increases the price of products by as much as 40% and has led to redundancies. They say that the consumption of other products not subject to the tax but with similar nutritional contents, like popcorn, has not dropped. They advocate the abolition of the tax in favor of educational measures. [1]
In 2011 the government passed a new tax levied on food products containing excessive amounts of salt, sugar or caffeine and since 2014 it is illegal to advertise food products containing more than 2% trans-fatty acids. [2]
Despite recent improvements, life expectancy in Hungary is still among the lowest in the European Union. [3] Romani people have a life expectancy up to ten years lower than ethnic Hungarians. [4]
| Year | Life expectancy (years, man/woman) | Infant mortality rate (‰) | Suicide rate (per 100,000 people) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | 59.28 / 63.40 | 91.0 | 23.9 |
| 1960 | 65.89 / 70.10 | 47.6 | 26.0 |
| 1970 | 66.31 / 72.08 | 35.9 | 34.6 |
| 1980 | 65.45 / 72.70 | 23.2 | 44.9 |
| 1990 | 65.13 / 73.71 | 14.8 | 39.8 |
| 2001 | 68.15 / 76.46 | 8.1 | 29.2 |
| 2011 | 70.93 / 78.23 | 4.9 | 24.3 |
| 2012 | 71.45 / 78.38 | 4.9 | 23.7 |
| 2013 | 72.01 / 78.73 | 5.1 | 21.1 |
| 2020 | 72,21 / 78,74 | 3,5 | 17,49 |
62,979 deaths (49.4% of all) in Hungary were caused by cardiovascular disease in 2013. [5] The number of cardiovascular disease deaths peaked in 1985 at 79,355, declining continuously since the fall of Communism. [5] The second most important cause of death was cancer with 33,274 (26.2% of all), stagnating since the 1990s. [5] The number of accident deaths dropped from 8,760 in 1990 to 3,654 in 2013, and the number of suicides from 4,911 in 1983 to 2,093 (21.1 per 100,000 people) in 2013 (the lowest data registered since 1956). [5] [6] According to Péter Polt, Chief Prosecutor of Hungary, there were only 133 homicides in 2012, which is the lowest number registered in the last 50 years in Hungary. [8] The homicide rate was 1.3 per 100,000 people, which is among the lowest in the World.
Despite recent improvements, alcoholism is still a major problem in Hungary, inherited from the Socialist era. [9] According to KSH estimates, the number of alcohol addicts was 1,052,000 (10% of the total population) in 1995, and declined to 432,000 (4.3% of the total population) in 2005. [10] Hungarians drank 9.5 litres of pure alcohol per capita in 2012; in 2005 alcohol consumption took the form of 40% wine, 35% beer, and 24% spirits. [11] ). Annual alcohol consumption has remained constant at between 9 and 11.5 liters of pure alcohol since the 1970s. [12]
Smoking also causes significant losses to Hungarian society. 28% of the adult population smoked in 2012, dropping to 25.8% in 2014 due to new regulations. [13] Nationwide smoking bans have been extended to every indoor public place (including pubs), and the sale of tobacco is limited to state-controlled (but privately owned) tobacco shops [14] called Nemzeti dohánybolt (National Tobacco Shop). The number of stores where people can buy tobacco decreased from 40,000–42,000 to 5,300. [15] In 2013 WHO gave an award to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for "accomplishments in the area of tobacco control". [16]
The Hungarian Central Statistical Office measures smoking habits on a five-year basis. In 2019 24,5% of the adult population used tobacco products daily while 55,2% never smoked. [13] Overall the percentage of adults who regularly smoke dropped from 27% in 2009 to 24,5% in 2019. According to the Hungarian Society of Cardiology approximately 40,000 people die from smoking-related causes such as cancer. [17] A 2017 study found that primary care doctors provide insufficient treatment to those suffering from nicotine addiction and seeking to quit. [18] Only 2% of smokers received pharmacotherapy while 25% of the participants were treated with brief intervention programs. These findings articulated the need for better guidelines for general practitioners to treat nicotine addiction more effectively.
According to the last Országos Lakossági Egészségfelmérés ("National Population Health Survey") held in 2003 the most healthy region is Western Transdanubia and the least is the Southern Great Plain. There are huge differences between the western and eastern parts of Hungary, heart disease, hypertension, stroke and suicide is prevalent in the mostly agricultural and low-income characteristic Great Plain (can be described as the Hungarian Stroke Belt), but infrequent in the high-income and middle class characteristic Western Transdanubia. Central Hungary (region of Budapest) is between east and west by health. [19]
The economy of Hungary is a high-income mixed economy, ranked as the 9th most complex economy according to the Economic Complexity Index. Hungary is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with a very high human development index and a skilled labour force, with the 22nd lowest income inequality by Gini index in the world. The Hungarian economy is the 53rd-largest economy in the world with $265.037 billion annual output, and ranks 41st in the world in terms of GDP per capita measured by purchasing power parity. Hungary has an export-oriented market economy with a heavy emphasis on foreign trade; thus the country is the 35th largest export economy in the world. The country had more than $100 billion of exports in 2015, with a high trade surplus of $9.003 billion, of which 79% went to the European Union (EU) and 21% was extra-EU trade. Hungary's productive capacity is more than 80% privately owned, with 39.1% overall taxation, which funds the country's welfare economy. On the expenditure side, household consumption is the main component of GDP and accounts for 50% of its total, followed by gross fixed capital formation with 22% and government expenditure with 20%.
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onwards but embedded itself in certain strata of a number of societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus.
Lifestyle diseases can be defined as the diseases linked to the manner in which a person lives their life. These diseases are non-communicable, and can be caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, alcohol, substance use disorders and smoking tobacco, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, obesity, type II diabetes and lung cancer. The diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries become more industrialized and people live longer include Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney failure, osteoporosis, PCOD, stroke, depression, obesity and vascular dementia.
A sin tax is an excise tax specifically levied on certain goods deemed harmful to society and individuals, such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, candies, soft drinks, fast foods, coffee, sugar, gambling, and pornography. In contrast to Pigovian taxes, which are to pay for the damage to society caused by these goods, sin taxes are used to increase the price in an effort to lower demand, or failing that, to increase and find new sources of revenue. Increasing a sin tax is often more popular than increasing other taxes. However, these taxes have often been criticized for burdening the poor and disproportionately taxing the physically and mentally dependent.
A fat tax is a tax or surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or on overweight individuals. It is considered an example of Pigovian taxation. A fat tax aims to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the economic costs of obesity.
A non-communicable disease (NCD) is a disease that is not transmissible directly from one person to another. NCDs include Parkinson's disease, autoimmune diseases, strokes, heart diseases, cancers, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, cataracts, and others. NCDs may be chronic or acute. Most are non-infectious, although there are some non-communicable infectious diseases, such as parasitic diseases in which the parasite's life cycle does not include direct host-to-host transmission.
Healthcare in Europe is provided through a wide range of different systems run at individual national levels. Most European countries have a system of tightly regulated, competing private health insurance companies, with government subsidies available for citizens who cannot afford coverage. Many European countries offer their citizens a European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries.
Health in the United Kingdom refers to the overall health of the population of the United Kingdom. This includes overall trends such as life expectancy and mortality rates, mental health of the population and the suicide rate, smoking rates, alcohol consumption, prevalence of diseases within the population and obesity in the United Kingdom. Three of these – smoking rates, alcohol consumption and obesity – were above the OECD average in 2015.
Life expectancy has been rising rapidly and South Korea ranked 3rd in the world for life expectancy. South Korea has among the lowest HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate in the world, with just 0.1% of the population being infected, significantly lower than the U.S. at 0.6%, France's 0.4%, and the UK's 0.3% prevalence rate. South Korea has a good influenza vaccination rate, with a total of 43.5% of the population being vaccinated in 2019. A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1920 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by the Lancet in September 2018. South Korea had the sixth highest level of expected human capital with 26 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years.
The major causes of deaths in Finland are cardiovascular diseases, malignant tumors, dementia and Alzheimer's disease, respiratory diseases, alcohol related diseases and accidental poisoning by alcohol. In 2010, the leading causes of death among men aged 15 to 64 were alcohol related deaths, ischaemic heart disease, accident, suicides, lung cancer and cerebrovascular diseases. Among women the leading causes were breast cancer, alcohol related deaths, accidents, suicides, ischaemic heart disease and lung cancer.
The use of tobacco for smoking in New Zealand has been subjected to government regulation for a number of decades. On 10 December 2004, New Zealand became the third country in the world to make all indoor workplaces including bars and restaurants smoke-free. The smoking rate in New Zealand was about 8% as of 2023 when the new government planned to eliminate the nation's smoking ban to fund tax cuts.
Hungary has a tax-funded universal healthcare system, organized by the state-owned National Health Insurance Fund. While healthcare is considered universal, several reasons persist preventing Hungarian nationals to access healthcare services. For instance, a Hungarian citizen who lived abroad but is unable to show contributions to another country's healthcare system will not be able to access the Hungarian healthcare system free of charge. However, to the OECD, 100% of the total population is covered by universal health insurance, which is absolutely free for children, mothers or fathers with babies, students, pensioners, people with low income, handicapped people, priests and other church employees. In 2022 the cost of public health insurance is 8,400 HUF per month which is the equivalent of $23.69. The healthcare system underwent significant changes which also resulted in improving life expectancy and a very low infant mortality rate. According to the OECD Hungary spent 7.8% of its GDP on health care in 2012. Total health expenditure was $US1,688.7 per capita in 2011, US$1,098.3governmental-fund (65%) and US$590.4 private-fund (35%).
In Finland, the smoking figures are among the lowest in Europe. There are several factors that have influenced the decrease in the smoking prevalence, such as legislative actions, health promotion and national monitoring systems, policies aimed at reducing tobacco consumption through public awareness campaigns, advertising bans and increased taxation. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has the leading role in tobacco control in Finland, and one of their main aims is have a more effective ban on sale of tobacco products to children and young people and to prevent sale of illegal tobacco products. Among the key elements in the successful tobacco policy is the traditional collaboration between the health authorities and non-governmental organisations, and intensive health promotion.
Crime in Hungary is combated by the Hungarian police and other agencies.
Health in Malta has seen improvements in recent years, with one of the highest life expectancies in Europe. Malta has a good overall quality of health and has seen rapid growth and improvement in key health indicators. Malta has seen significant development in the practice of mental health which has been supported by new infrastructure and increased government health spending. The introduction of health-focused government initiatives, particularly around nutrition, alcohol, smoking, and health will likely contribute to the further improvement of overall health nationwide.
Health in Norway, with its early history of poverty and infectious diseases along with famines and epidemics, was poor for most of the population at least into the 1800s. The country eventually changed from a peasant society to an industrial one and established a public health system in 1860. Due to the high life expectancy at birth, the low under five mortality rate and the fertility rate in Norway, it is fair to say that the overall health status in the country is generally good.
Montenegro is a country with an area of 13,812 square kilometres and a population of 620,029, according to the 2011 census. The country is bordered by Croatia, the Adriatic Sea, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania. The most common health issues faced are non-communicable diseases accounting for 95% of all deaths. This is followed by 4% of mortality due to injury, and 1% due to communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions. Other health areas of interest are alcohol consumption, which is the most prevalent disease of addiction within Montenegro and smoking. Montenegro has one of the highest tobacco usage rates across Europe. Life expectancy for men is 74 years, and life expectancy for women is 79.
The following article is a ranked list of Hungarian counties.
