Author(s): Zsuzsanna Kassai, Tibor Farkas
Title: School closures in rural Hungary
Source: International Scientific Days 2016. The Agri-Food Value Chain: Challenges for Natural Resources Management and Society
Document Type: Scientific paper
ISBN: 978-80-552-1503-7
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15414/isd2016.s7.06
Publisher: Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra
PY, pages: 2016, 477-483
Published on-line: 2016-06-24
Language: eng
Abstract: Schools play important role in the sustainability of rural communities, since they provide basic education and economic opportunities in rural areas. Moreover, schools are often the social hubs of the villages and serve as cultural centres, too. Therefore, this study is going to show the benefits and the negative effects of school closures in rural Hungary. The main goal of this paper is to identify the community-level characteristics associated with the presence or absence of a school. First, an extended literature review was done and then territorial databases of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office were studied in the summer of 2015. Village-level demographic, social and economic indicators were selected for the analysis. Only those rural villages were examined where the population number was less than 2,000. To avoid the influence of the population size on the research findings two subsets of data were created. The first one contained the very small rural villages, while the second one included small and medium-sized villages. The socio-economic characteristics of settlements with and without school were compared. It was found that the better socio-economic situation of villages with school was not clear. It was established that the villages with schools had better demographic performance, partly better living and infrastructural conditions, but the employment and the welfare characteristics were worse, compared to those without schools.
Keywords: school closure, consolidation, rural community, education, Hungary
JEL Classification: I25
Rights: Open Access :: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence
Toto dielo je publikované pod/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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