“What impressed me about the Regional Database wasn’t the wide range of information at my disposal but its user interface and how it works. Finally a site where information can be downloaded in an analysable format! I recommend everyone to first search using the Regional Database! “
(Tamás Bartus, associate professor, Corvinus University of Budapest)
“As far as I can remember Hungarian public thinking is dominated by people who don’t dare say their point of view either because they don’t know the basic facts or suppress them. To put an end to this era of fossilised verbosity based on misconceptions facts are needed -- facts and figures. The impressive data collection is perfect for this as well, which its creator called the Hungarian Regional Database. He might as well have called it Critical Facts or simply: do not lie; it will come out in the end anyway.”
(János Haász, journalist, Index.hu, Budapest)
“What stuck me about the Regional Database were the pictures and maps, from which the country’s thousand faces were drawn.”
(Orsolya Lelkes, Economist, European Centre, Vienna)
“The Regional Database’s rich information base is not only a readily available and easy to use system, but a useful tool as an independent and private background resource for the analysis of regional processes of the widest range.”
(Jozsef Nemes Nagy, professor at ELTE, Budapest)
July 7,2011
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| Graph animation 1 |
Graph animation 2 |
April 20, 2011
Perpetual Disadvantage: High proportion of the Roma population in the labor market and income characteristics of the sub-regions in Hungary from 1990-2008 *
In 17 seconds we give an idea of the labor market and income history of the sub-regions where the highest proportion of the Roma population in Hungary is located. Animations are based on the Hungarian Regional Database 1.0. Click on the image to start the animation.
Scatter plot of the sub-regions with a registered unemployment rate and per capita income from 1990-2008
*: The dark red points show the small areas where the highest proportion of the Roma population is located (this includes sub-regions in this regard in the upper quartile). The horizontal axis shows the proportion of registered job-seekers for the active population whereas the vertical axis shows the average regional per capita income in relation to the national average. The more to the right and lower a region is located (one point) indicates that it’s in a worse position according to the two indicators. The animation shows the movement of small regions from 1990-2008 on the basis of these two factors.
April 17, 2011
Twenty years - twenty seconds *
The Hungarian economy and Hungarian society twenty years ago: some animations using the Hungarian Regional Database 1.0. Click on the image to start the animation.
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| Cars per 100 inhabitants (number), 1992-2008 |
Per capita income (thousand HUF) 1990-2008 |
Proportion of recent graduates (%) 2002-2009 |
Ratio of Registered job-seekers (%) 1993-2008 |
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Cars per 100
inhabitants (number),
1992-2008
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*: The colors represent a fifth of the 174 Hungarian sub-regions
About the Hungarian Regional Database (HRD)
The 1.0 version of the HRD has been designed to give an overview of the emergence and state of development of the regions, counties, mezo-regions and settlements of Hungary, using nearly 500 economic and social indicators, of the period between 1990 and 2008. In the current version of the Hungarian Regional Database, the data are accessible in six classifications (regional, counties, three mezo-regions and one classification according to labour market areas), while the program allows users access to nearly 32 million individual data items.
The HRD was financed by the Hungarian Government. The basis of the HRD development was the agreement between the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IE HAS) and the Employment and Social Office (agreement 1 - pdf, agreement 2 - pdf), the cooperation agreement between the Institute for Social Policy and Labour and IE HAS (cooperation agreement - pdf), as well as the enthusiastic (and often voluntary) work of the development team.
Depending upon our financial resources, we would like to carry on with the development of the program following the release version 1.0. In the near future we hope to upgrade the underlying data and add a new menu option for those interested in regional differences pertaining to the social and economic trends of Hungary.
We have launched this 1.0 version of the HRD with the conviction that it will help all those who would like to easily and quickly access data related to Hungarian regions, counties, mezo-regions or settlements as well as the related social and economic indicators according to their varying needs.
Budapest, 10 November 2010
Developers' team of the Hungarian Regional Database
Background to the Development of the Hungarian Regional Database (HRD)
Since 2007 a research unit, IE HAS, has been dealing with developing programs available on-line which provide on-line queries and downloadable social and economic datasets by territorial units (i.e. regions, counties, mezo-regions, and settlements). Iloma, the first interactive on-line interface of this kind, was developed in September 2007, and it made accessible and downloadable a significant number of economic, demographic, and social indicators provided by IE HAS, for everybody from the the Institute's website.
The Hungarian Regional Database (www.eroforrasterkep.hu) was developed by the same research team and a demo version was launched in October 2008 as a supplement of our study carried out in the framework of the research program "Planning and designing the operating conditions of an Interactive Resource Map by mezo-regions" as laid down in a contract signed by the Employment and Social Office (now: the Public Employment Service) and IE HAS (download the paper in Hungarian here). Similar to the previously developed on-line site Iloma, the Hungarian Regional Database is strongly related to the work carried out in the databank of IE HAS, and is partly built on the indicators calculated on the basis of the data handled by IE HAS and provided by the Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration, the Hungarian Central Statistics Office, and the Public Employment Service.
The beta version of the Hungarian Regional Database was finished in July 2009, and was presented on 28 September 2008 at the professional event of the Committee of Labour Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the hall of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (download the presentation here in Hungarian). In the development of the beta version we used the development experience of previous development projects, and utilized the American and European examples (BEA, MAGIC) of developments making economic data available.
In late 2009, the Analysts Team for Social Policy (SZECS) of the Institute for Social Policy and Labour (SZMI) got involved in the development of the 1.0 version of the program.
SZECS, cooperating with IE HAS, worked out and inserted into the HRD a system of indicators related to some important services and supplies of the Hungarian system of social policy. During our work, we have completed the existing database with new calculated indicators that can efficiently help the sectoral governance of the social area, the preparation of decision-making at central and local levels, and the work of researchers and analysts of social policy. The system makes it possible to poll on different territorial levels, and offers several display modes for the users of the system.
