The news this morning is that the Hungarian population continues to shrink, but in a spirit of exceptional cheerfulness the Hungarian media is reporting this positively. Positively, as in no change in the decline: Változatlan ütemben csökken a népesség. What they fail to spell out is that there has been no change in the continuing decline now for years.

In the first four months of this year (Jan-Apr) the decline was by 16,800 people, with the number of deaths seeing an increase of 3% - according to the Central Statistical Office (KSH). The increase in the number of births was 4.5% so there is hope there, but the overall decrease speaks for itself. The government have been promising and providing increased financial support to couples with children, which may have helped produce the increase in births. It will be interesting to see whether Hungary will go as far as other declining nations in the amount of financial incentives they provide to mothers.

The Central Statistical Office reckon that the current population is 10,088,000 - once the number of immigrants is taken into account. This differs from the stats given by the US CIA factbook as a result. What I love about this is that Hungary goes out of its way to make the process of nationalisation to become a Hungarian citizen so obstructive, so mindlessly complicated, so wasteful. You think with their population problems they'd sort out what their priorities are for the future of the nation. In the press they report this increease in immigrants as a really positive sign, they've obviously never seen the faces of the officials that do the welcoming and processing.

According to the US CIA factbook, the population back in July 2003 was estimated at 10,045,407 for July 2005 this is now 10,006,835. In the space of 2 years there's about 40,000 fewer Hungarians to take part in reality TV shows. There's a crisis looming in those media empires that require a decent assortment of Joe public as material for their 'entertaining' programme formats. A reality TV show based around giving birth could solve boths problems in one fell swoop.

The most hopeful sign in all these statistics is that infant deaths decreased by 14% - surely a sign of improvements in tackling poverty? Deaths now stand at 6.3 per 1,000 births. And in the same period there was an increase in the number of marriages by 270 compared to the same time last year (an increase of 0.1% - WhooHoo). So, who knows, a further increase in births on the way?