ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the main macro-economic tendencies that characterized the four transition countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia. It analyses national income dynamics, demographic change, the main trends of the economically active and inactive population and youth in education. Slovenia and Hungary have performed best among the Central and Eastern European countries, with growth from the mid-1990s compensating for early transition shocks. By contrast, the early transition shocks resulted in a large decline of the national GDP between 1989 and 1998 in Bulgaria which was not fully compensated by a 20% increase in GDP between 1998 and 2004. Romania has accumulated more and deeper negative effects: there is a substantially lower share of wage-earners, and a higher share of pensioners, children and other inactive persons as compared to the other three countries. In addition, most of the self-employed are in fact "disguised unemployed" engaged in subsistence agriculture on small plots.
