Some Characteristics of the New Middle Class in Central and Eastern Europe: a 10 Nation Study

Abstract: This comparative paper is analysing the self-employed in nine post-Communist nations: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. The Data-Base consists of the New Democracies Barometer 4, which was conducted in 1996 and encompassed 9.000 face-to-face interviews. The highest number of self-employed was found in advanced transformation countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia. Amongst the self-employed we found a dominance of men, persons with higher levels of education and the younger generation. The youth of self-employed in Central and Eastern Europe is a good sign for the future growth of that emerging occupational stratum in the next years of economic transformations in post-Communist Europe.;