24,000 Hungarians receive pensions higher than HUF 600,000

The Central Statistical Office has published its latest statistics on pensions and the situation of pensioners in Hungary. According to this, at the beginning of 2024, a long trend was reversed, and the proportion of people dependent on the pension system within society did not decrease, but increased.

This process is shown in the following figure. This shows that the number of old-age pension recipients has not changed much in the last 12 years, it was always around 2 million people. On the other hand, the number of people receiving age-based benefits and benefits for people with altered working abilities has decreased significantly.

Within society, the proportion of beneficiaries decreased from 29.4 percent in 2012 to 25.1 percent in 2023. By the beginning of this year, this had increased to 25.3 percent, but KSH did not say whether this was a one-time jump or a real trend reversal.

How much is that much?

The KSH also published how many people received pensions in January this year. Only pensions due in their own right are included in this, widow’s pensions are not.

The figure shows that the majority of those receiving benefits receive between HUF 120,000 and HUF 300,000. About 200,000 people receive benefits of less than HUF 100,000, according to the KSH, many of them receive partial pensions in addition to entitlements acquired abroad. Meanwhile

there are 24,475 Hungarians whose pensions are higher than HUF 600,000.

In addition, the figure shows that there are more women than men in all payment bands below HUF 400,000, but above HUF 400,000, men are in the majority. In addition to the differences in salaries, this is caused by the fact that men typically work longer, so they are calculated pensions with better multipliers.

Hungarian pensioners living abroad

At the beginning of 2024, pensions and other benefits were paid to 49,000 people living abroad, 74 percent of which were old-age pensions. This includes Hungarian pensioners living abroad, as well as foreigners who previously worked in Hungary, paid pension contributions, and then moved back to their native country. Allocations were typically made to the following countries:

The figure shows that most Hungarian pensions are received by people living in Germany, followed by Ukraine, Austria and Slovakia. The KSH notes that the average amount of benefits paid abroad was much lower than domestic benefits, since in the case of those who have completed service in several countries, the countries concerned share the pension burden in proportion to the insurance time they have acquired.