Hungary

The number of divorces has been relatively stable over the past three decades. It peaked in the 1980s, when an average of 28,000 marriages were dissolved each year. This figure shows that in the 1980s, there was a kind of dualism in the way society looked at the family. On the one hand, society expected young people to marry, but on the other it accepted that a significant proportion of the marriages ended in divorce.

The 1989 changes in the political system coincided with smaller changes in the number of divorces. Until 1992, the number of divorces decreased, and then the yearly absolute number of divorces fell below 22,000. After 1992, the trend again shifted, and in 1999 the number of divorces rose to 25,600 (563 per 1,000 new marriages). If the divorce rates remain steady, it would be expected that close to one-third of the marriages contracted in the end of the 1990s will end in divorce. In three-quarters of the marriages that end in divorce, the couples have children.

Thus, the political changes, at least temporarily, increased the stability of existing marriages. During this time of change in family life, several contradictory factors were affecting the situation. The social and economic processes that began in 1989 supposedly increased solidarity and kept individuals in families. These included, first, unemployment and impoverishment. The same trend is visible in the increasing number of family-run small businesses as a means to escape unemployment. At the same time, the increased educational level of women pushed the indicators toward what has remained a high divorce rate.