Hungary

The decline in the popularity of marriage is also related to major changes in beliefs about and acceptance of cohabitation. The number of people living together without being married and the share of lasting partner relationships that they represent is still lower in Hungary compared to Western European countries, but this was especially true in previous decades. For a long time, this type of partner relationship belonged to the lower levels of the society. The number of people cohabiting was negatively affected by economic factors (first of all, the possibilities of getting a place to live), legal factors, and social factors—society still did not accept non-marital cohabitation in lieu of marriage. However, during the years since the 1989 political changes, A Hungarian family in Budapest takes a break from ice skating. Hungarians see the ideal family as a married couple bringing up one or two children. PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS the effect of these factors weakened. Cohabitation gradually became an accepted partner relationship in the case of young people who had not yet married. According 1996 data from the Microcensus, the number of unmarried couples living together grew from 125,000 in 1990 to 180,000 in 1996—a figure that represents 7 percent of the marriage-type partner relationships. In the 1990s, the ratio of cohabitation increased in the younger age groups. In 1994, among women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen who lived with partners, one-third were not married to their partner; in 1980, this figure in the same type of group was 3 percent. In the same year, among women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four who lived with partners, 15 percent were not married; this figure was 1 percent in 1980 (Klinger 1996).