For some two years now studies on the former socialist countries have generally referred to the much higher social and economic costs of the change-over from a planned to a market economy than was expected around 1989. Thus, the Secretariat of the UN Economic Commission for Europe writes: \u201cA prolonged economic downturn, high levels of unemployment, sharply reduced social security, widening income and wealth differences, falling health standards and the rise of organized crime, have all contributed to frustration, disillusion and mounting political tensions. As a result, the current mood among the East European populations is very different from the enthusiasm and hope which were raised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989.\u201d (ECE, 1995, p.9.) Concerning Russia the same point is worded by Tatiana Zaslavskaya (1996, p. 4.), a leading Russian sociologist in a very similar way: \u201cthe social price of reform turned out to be much heavier than had been expected and promised, and this led in the end to disillusion, fatigue and anomie of a fairly large part of the population\u201d. In the case of the former socialist countries the term \u201cthe costs of transition\u201d suggests that we are talking about something that is obvious and quantifiable, about a determinacy of the sort proclaimed over many decades by those who vulgarized the theory of historical materialism. We all know the results.The term \u201ccosts\u201d is also ambiguous. We do not know the costs of what are under discussion, nor what \u201ccosts\u201d means in this context. The word generally means one of two things. One is the efforts, factor inputs needed to achieve a particular result. Creating a competitive market economy \u2013 structural changes in the economy, constructing a modern infrastructure, training the workforce etc., all require resources that can be defined ad quantified. But such costs cannot be covered in general by the former socialist countries and particularly not by those experiencing and economic depression of unprecedented depth. The assessment of the costs of \u201ctransition\u201d, i.e. its negative social effects is hampered or even precluded by two factors. One of them is the choice of a basis for comparison. One cannot draw conclusions from comparing two pictures \u2013 likewise detergent ads \u2013 depicting the dirty linen \u201cbefore\u201d and \u201cafter\u201d washing or cleaning. The present situation definitely differs from the condition existing before the systemic change but this fact is yet insufficient to the evaluation of the change. The problem cannot be solved either if we equalize that share with the whole, and declare that the troubles manifested after 1990 \u2013 like recession, impoverishment, unemployment, decay of public health and education, crisis of the pension system etc. \u2013 \u201cwere caused by the terminal dysfunctioning, by the collapse of the old regime\u201d (Kem\u00e9ny, 1993, p. 7), By doing this, we would in fact turn a blind eye to the system-specific character of some \u201cnew troubles\u201d like the long-term mass unemployment and to the necessity of their proper treatment. On the other hand, we would also get round the question why \u201cthe social costs\u201d are so high and how they could be or could have been diminished. It is not our purpose here to answer these questions. Our aim is more modest: a few preliminary steps that may help to formulate an answer. We shall attempt, as best as we can, to outline the social costs of transformation in the second sense of the term in an international comparative context. Generally, as we cannot unambiguously distinguish between the problems caused by the terminal dysfunctioning \u2013 to use Kem\u00e9ny\u2019s phrase \u2013 of the old regime and the losses caused by the transformation social costs are here understood as the negative phenomena that accompany the systemic change (cf. Balcerowicz, 1993, p. 27.). What we shall list here are factors which determine or express working and living conditions, health and social status. Living conditions and economic processes influence each other in a manner that makes it difficult to differentiate between them. It is the former, however, that are our present subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some two years now studies on the former socialist countries have generally referred to the much higher social and economic costs of the change-over from a planned to a market economy than was expected around 1989. Thus, the Secretariat of the UN Economic Commission for Europe writes: \u201cA prolonged economic downturn, high levels of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muhelytanulmany","category-makrogazdasag-muhelytanulmany"],"acf":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2073,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/2073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kopint-tarki.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}