Strange and unconventional benefits do not support the needy, and social policy instruments are not only used for social policy purposes, our Research Fellow Dorottya Szikra said to Qubit.

The article covers a forthcoming study by our researchers, Dorottya Szikra, Adrienn Gyory and Kerem Gabriel Oktem, analyzing family policies in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia, the results of which were presented at a DI seminar.

"We were taught at university, and the Western literature also wrote that the more democratic a country is, the more welfare state its citizens impose, since the establishment of political rights is the basis for the introduction of social rights," Dorottya Szikra said, adding that “from this logic, it should follow that the more a democracy declines, the less it involves, for example, trade unions or NGOs in decision-making, the more social rights should be weakened and the less [the state] should invest in welfare measures."

While Hungary does show a decline, if we look at other countries, this is not the case everywhere. In Poland, for example, rising spending can be seen, while Russia and Turkey have seen fluctuating but broadly unchanged levels of spending on family policy. "In Hungary, if you include tax breaks and all these weird, unconventional social policy benefits, the decline is not so steep," explains Szikra.

Read the full article here.