1990 POPULATION CENSUS Detailed data based on a 2 per cent representative sample (1992)

B/ Main characteristics of households and families

B/ Main characteristics of households and families Composition of households At the date of the population census, in Hungary, of 3 815 000 households 2 830 000 were so-called family households containing one or more families. This is 74 per cent of the totál number of households which is by about 10 percentage points lower than in 1960. In the past thirty years the decline was continuous and steady. At the same time, the proportion of households consisting of persons who don't form a family grew. At present, almost each fourth is such a household. This tendency results mostly from the great increase in the share of persons living alone, whose number, during three decades grew almost to the double, from 447 000 to 849 000 and whose proportion — rising continuously — increased from 15 per cent to 22 per cent. Similarly to the earlier decades, in the 1980s, too, the average size of households decreased significantly. Since 1980, the number of households has increased nearly by 3 per cent, while the number of persons living in households has fallen by more than 2 per cent. In consequence of all this, during the last ten years the number of persons per 100 households declined by 13 persons, to 266 persons. The pace of the decrease was somewhat lower than in the earlier decades, which can be explained by the fact that though the pace of increase in the proportion of one-person households did not change, the average size of households consisting of one family and representing the majority of family households declined only to a small extent compared to the earlier periods. This is supported by the fact, too, that the number of persons per 100 family households is only by 9 lower than in 1980. 30. Number and composition of households Household composition Number (1000) Percentage Household composition 1960 1970 1980 1990 1960 1970 1980 1990 One-family hauseholds 2424 2515 2705 2727 78.7 74.5 72.7 71.5 Two-family households. 160 180 154 100 5.2 5.3 4.1 2.6 Three or more family households 4 5 5 3 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.1 Family-households together 2588 2700 2864 2830 84.1 79.9 77.0 74.2 One-person households 447 590 731 849 14.5 17.5 19.6 22.3 Other household compositions 44 87 125 135 1.4 2.6 3.4 3.5 Non-family households together 491 677 856 985 15.9 20.1 23.0 25.8 Totál households 3079 3378 3719 3815 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Persons per 100 households 310 295 279 266 Persons per 100 family-households 347 341 327 318 28