The relative financial situation of pensioners in Hungary worsened in 2024 compared to society as a whole, as pensions increased less than wages based on the latest pension report from the Central Statistical Office, reported on by Portfolio.hu.
According to the latest data, the average pension for men was HUF 267,400 forints (€650), while for women, it was HUF 228,000.
In 2023, women received 86.1 percent of the average pension for men, while in 2024, this figure stood at 85.7 percent. Now, for 2025, women will receive just 85.3 percent of the average pension for men.
Women are at a disadvantage for two reasons, writes Portfolio: their average earnings and length of service are both lower than those of men.
According to Eurostat’s 2023 report, the wage gap between Hungarian men and women is 17.8 percent. In terms of the average length of service at retirement, women lag behind men by 4.7 years (33.8 years vs. 38.2 years), based on 2019 data from the State Treasury.
This double disadvantage is inevitably reflected in the value of pensions, although according to the above figures, the pension system is able to somewhat mitigate the income gap in the active life period.
Women’s shorter service time is also due to a government perk of being able to retire before reaching the age of 65 if they can prove at least 40 years of qualifying service. The Women40 program is extremely popular, with 28-29 percent of all pension determinations (including men) taking place within its framework each year.
Women are also overrepresented at low pension levels, while men dominate at high pension levels. For example, for those with a monthly pension of more than HUF 500,000 (3.4 percent of all beneficiaries), 50,000 are men, while 28,000 are women.
Out of all pensioners, most receive HUF 180,000 to HUF 200,000, with the majority between the ages of 66 and 70.
The Central Statistical Office points out that in 2024, the relative financial situation of pensioners within society as a whole worsened: while earnings increased by 9.2 percent in real terms, the real value of pensioners’ benefits increased by only 2.2 percent. As a result of modest pension increases and high wage growth, the value of pensions fell 6.4 percent behind wages last year. Such a large gap has not been seen since 2019.
This means that the real value of pensions is generally increasing less than the income of the active working age group – in a similar way to last year – due primarily to the indexation that merely follows inflation, i.e., ignoring the rate of wage increases. There are drastic differences in pensions between the rich and poor parts of the country.
The introduction of the 13th month pension has helped the situation of pensioners a lot, and it is largely due to this that the real value of the total benefits of pensioners was able to increase from 2020 to 2025.
