A cigányság helyzete, életkörülményei 1993 (1994)

Bevezető

Introduction The Hungarian Central Statistical Office, joining the labour force survey of the Unified System of Household Surveys (USHS), carried out, in 1993, a sample survey covering almost 27,000 households, one of he main aims of which was to get orientation with regard to the situation and living conditions of the gipsy population. This survey, similarly to the method applied repeatedly since the 1893 general survey of the gipsies, departed from the investigation into the households. Enumerators, with a good knowledge of local conditions, classified the households by their life-styles, unequivocally differentiating, between, respectively, households with "gipsy life-style", with "transitional (uncertain) life-style" and with "non-gipsy life-style". The population of the households assigned into the first group can be regarded, with good approximation, as belonging to the gipsy ethnic group, though the possibility of individual misjudgements of subjective character, independent from the actual intentions, cannot be completely excluded. Further, in the evaluation of the numerical data, one has to take into consideration, that they were produced rendering full-scope and multiplying the data of the sampling. In conclusion, it can be established that, in 1993, in Hungary, the size of the population of ethnic gipsies reached and perhaps even surpassed somewhat 400 thousand, which represented approximately 4 percent of the population of the country. This number is almost three times as high as the effective of the gipsy national group shown on the basis of the self-reported data of the 1990 population census, but is significantly under the effective of 7-800 thousand, or of a million published in some communications. At the same time, the survey provides a present-day and true picture of the regional distribution, demographic characteristics, household- and family structure, the disadvantaged position, with regard to education, economic activity and occupational structure, of the gipsy ethnic group as well as about the unemployment among them which is particularly menacing this population group. Budapest, June 1994. 6