Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
The problem of the siting of industry has once again come to the fore after the 7th Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. ... Budapest a szocializmus útján [Budapest on the road to socialism J, ed.: Directorate of the Central Statistical Office, Budapest, 1962, pp. 33-36. XXXIV Excerpts from the report of the Planning Department on the demographic and labour situation in the capital submitted to the Municipal Council April 26th, 1968 Population Trends At the time of the 1960 census 1,805,000 people inhabited the 526 sq.km area of Budapest (3,434 people per sq.km), which amounts to 18 per cent of the population of the country. Compared with other European capitals, this figure is relatively high. Based on the number of inhabitants, Budapest was at that time ninth among the great cities of Europe. Population growth depends on industrialization, on the possibilities of differentiated manual and intellectual work, on urbanization, the rate of which is essentially influenced by the aims of economic policy. The changes which take place in the national economic system and structure of production are reflected in the population figures. Between the last two censuses, the population of Budapest grew by 214,000, and since that time—up to 1968—by further 180,000 (despite the loss of about 90,000, due to emigration in 1956 and 1957). The population of the capital consequently increased in nineteen years by a figure amounting to the present population of the towns of Debrecen, Pécs and Szeged. ... At the time of the First Five-Year Plan—between 1950 and 1954—the population of the city increased rapidly (on the average at an annual 2 per cent). Natural increases, due to working and living conditions, which were usually better in Budapest than in the provinces, contributed to this increase, in addition to differences in the migration figures. Another factor which contributed to this extremely rapid increase in the population was the attraction exerted by industry and the simultaneous considerable development of the other branches of the national economy at the same time, especially the service trades (commerce, local transport, social and communal services), although this was less than the rate of industrial development. In 1891 the figures for employees in the service trades amounted to only 10 per cent of all employees, while in 1960 it was nearly a third. This development stemmed mainly from the better standards and opportunities for employment existing in the capital. The increase in the number of work-places employing women is particularly important in this respect, because it required a rapid expansion of the network of various child welfare institutions (kindergartens, creches, day nurseries). As a result of the combination of these factors, and also as a consequence of an increasing birth rate, the population of Budapest grew by 240,000 (15 per cent) in 6 years—between 1949 and 1954,—even if settlement in the capital increased in difficulty owing to poor housing conditions. This population increase was greater than in any other single century 130
