The Process of Poverty Reproduction in Rural Areas. The Case of Youth from the Romanian-Hungarian Cross Border Region

Journal of Social Research & Policy, Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Online First

Date: July 2016

ISSN: 2067-2640 (print), 2068-9861 (electronic)

Abstract: Studies about poverty associate it with the rural areas, especially in Eastern Europe. Even after the integration in the European Union, poverty in rural areas perpetuated in the former Communist countries, at about the same level. In our paper we examine the extent to which the factors that support rural poverty are similar in the cross border area of Bihor County from Romania and Hajdú-Bihar County from Hungary. The study was conducted based on the results of a survey carried out among young people from the rural cross border regions of the two counties. The sociological research was part of the project “Facilitating the Integration of Rural Youth on the Labor Market of Bihor-Hajdú Bihar Euro-Region”, financed through the Hungary-Romania Cross-Border Co-operation Programme 2007-2013 which allowed us to study the exposure to poverty of the rural youth in correlation with the social-economic situation and status of their family. Our study confirms the hypothesis according to which the factors that influence the reproduction of poverty in the rural areas (lack of jobs, poor education, and poor infrastructure) are similar in the cross-border region between Romania and Hungary. The north-western region of Romania and the eastern part of Hungary are included in the same Euro region (Kovács, 1990) and in the same B cluster. Agriculture in the rural area on the border between the two countries cannot be characterized as being industrialized and it has two negative effects: poverty and more recently ecological issues.

Keywords: Rural Poverty; Labor Market; Cross-Border Region; Rural Employment.