EN
During the course of our research project entitled 'Youth 2000', eight thousand young people were requested to qualify the financial situation of the family–household they lived in. We used certain statements in the survey that describe and distinguish relatively well certain conditions of the financial, income, consumption and existential position of the given family, sketching a model of the respective realities of present-day Hungarian society. Such statements were the following: there are some who 'live without problems', others 'manage well with economising', next those who 'just manage to make both ends meet', or those who struggle against 'financial difficulties from month to month', as there are others in our society who 'live in privation'. What kind of 'realities' the given specifications and the meaning lent to them present, for instance, what kind of accumulation, living, and reproductive features have those who 'live without problems' out of their income (5%), or those who 'just manage' (38%)? The main finding of the paper is that the majority of the young have qualified the financial and existential condition of their families very realistically. It stresses further on that besides the thin stratum of those 'living without problems', a large part of families (39%) 'managing well with economising' cannot afford the bourgeois 'luxury' of building reserves and of accumulation, though the world they live in would very much require it. In the families of the young who qualify their situation worse, both the balance and the ability of accumulation lag far behind the previous groups, and naturally behind the competitive challenges set by the more developed countries of the European Union. The latter one is interesting because the Hungarian youth rather badly supplied with family and social resources already have to compete the youth of the Union in the similar age group.