FOCUS / WORKING TO DEATH : Hungarians in Rat Race to Earn a Living

Rising inflation and the threat of massive layoffs are forcing increasing numbers of Hungarians to work up to 14 hours a day to keep pace on the treadmill of making ends meet.

The spiral of overwork allows the industrious to maintain what in the West would be considered a modest life style. But the social consequences of fatigue and stress--rising accident rates, suicides and shorter life expectancy--are a warning that Hungarians are literally working themselves to death.

“It’s a new form of Darwinism, and only the fittest will survive,” sociologist Istvan Harcsa said.

To some extent, Hungarians are the victims of their own success. The “goulash communism” reforms of the 1970s encouraged after-hours private enterprise for life’s little extras, which gave Hungarians the highest standard of living in East Europe.

Grocers’ shelves are filled with fresh fruit, frozen pizza, convenience foods and imported delicacies. In contrast with the consumer wasteland of the more industrially prosperous states of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, Western fashions, electronic gadgets and the latest in home entertainment beckon from Budapest’s shiny store windows.

Home ownership is not just allowed but encouraged, and the recent freedom to travel to the West has whetted appetites for further tastes of the good life.

Summer homes, TV sets and video recorders were the rewards of hard labor in the past, but to keep these luxuries, which were often bought on credit, workers are stretching themselves to bridge the financial gap.

Ferenc and Eva Papp both put in double shifts at their respective factories in order to keep up the payments on the two-room apartment they share with their son and his student fiancee--and on the 6-year-old Skoda compact for which they can no longer afford to buy gas.

“I can’t imagine that my son will ever have the same living standard we do,” lamented Eva, a 51-year-old textile worker, gesturing scornfully at their Spartan home, a cubicle in a maze of drab, prefabricated high-rises.

Even working double-time, the Papps bring home only 24,000 forints ($380) a month, just over the unofficial poverty line of 20,000 forints, an amount considered necessary for the bare essentials for a family of four. Both Papps fear that their jobs may be lost in the belt-tightening that is unavoidable if Hungary is to pay off $21 billion in foreign debt.

“For 40 years we were told that workers in the West were exploited,” Papp said dejectedly. “Only now do we see that we were the exploited ones.”

Wages have been raised by only a few percentage points this year, in contrast with inflation, which has already topped 30%. To cover old debts and new increases in the cost of food, energy, housing and services, those who can are lengthening their workday.

Most of the moonlighting involves middle-class workers with skills that can be marketed at nights or on weekends, said Harcsa, research director for the National Statistics Institute. He estimates that about 60% of working-age adults are juggling two or three jobs.

The extra work may keep families afloat financially, but it is taking a toll on their health and welfare.

Col. Antal Baracsi of the national police force blames fatigue for much of a 26% increase last year in fatal traffic accidents and a similar rise in drunk-driving arrests.

Hungarian men have the shortest life expectancy in Europe, 65.7 years. Recent trends toward higher infant mortality and circulatory illnesses are other signs of a society under pressure, according to Health Ministry statistician Gyula Korom.

One marriage in three ends in divorce--the highest rate outside the United States--and the national suicide rate is second only to Finland’s.

Little relief can be expected before wholesale economic recovery is achieved, and even the most optimistic expect this to take at least five years.