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Hungary Settlement Patterns
In 1945 only 35 percent of the population lived in
urban
areas. After 1945 much of the population moved from the
country's
less developed counties to Budapest and later to its
suburbs and
to the industrial counties of Hajdú-Bihar and
Borsod-Abaúj-
Zemplen. The number of urban dwellers grew by more than 50
percent from 1949 to 1984. In 1978, for the first time in
the
country's history, more people lived in urban centers than
in
rural areas. In 1949 the population density was about 100
persons
per square kilometer. By the 1980s, that figure had
climbed to
about 117 persons per square kilometer.
In the late 1980s, nine cities had populations greater
than
100,000. Budapest, the country's focal point for
government,
culture, industry, trade, and transport, was by far the
largest
city, with 2.1 million inhabitants, or 19.2 percent of the
country's population. Other major population centers were
Debrecen, with 217,000 inhabitants; Miskolc, with 210,000;
Szeged, with 188,000; Pecs, with 182,000; Györ, with
131,000;
Nyiregyhaza, with 119,000; Szekesfehervar, with 113,000;
and
Kecskemet, with 105,000. In 1988 the country had a total
of 143
urban centers with more than 10,000 inhabitants, where
about 62
percent of the population lived.
As of 1988, the country had 2,915 settlements with
fewer than
10,000 inhabitants, where 38 percent of the people made
their
homes. Beginning in the 1950s, the smallest villages, or
those
with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, tended to lose their
residents. However, the number of people leaving the
villages
decreased every year after 1960. Whereas in 1960 about
259,000
people left the villages permanently, that number declined
to
about 129,000 in 1986. The number of people leaving the
villages
exceeded the number coming to the countryside by
approximately
52,000 people in 1960. That number had declined to 37,769
in 1980
and 20,814 in 1986.
In the 1980s, a substantial number of persons of
Hungarian
origin lived outside the country. Many of these lived in
neighboring countries
(see Relations with Other Communist Neighbors
, ch. 4). Others had moved even farther from
their
homeland. In the three decades before World War I, some 3
million
ethnic Hungarian peasants had fled to the United States to
escape
rural poverty
(see Social Changes
, ch. 1). During and
after the
Revolution of 1956, about 250,000 people left the country,
traveling first to Austria and Yugoslavia and eventually
emigrating to Australia, Britain, Canada, France,
Switzerland,
the United States, and West Germany. In the late 1980s,
about 40
percent of all persons of Hungarian origin were living
outside
Hungary.
Data as of September 1989
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