The main purposes of the academic research commissioned by the Rural Development Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development were: to examine the interrelation between long-term unemployment and individual as well as family life strategies, the regional characteristics of the labour market and the territorial development of rural areas, as well as explore governmental and local ambitions to alleviate long-term unemployment and evaluate their efficiency. The basic issues of the research were as follows: 1) Which are the regions where the concentrations of long-term unemployment can be found and what are the reasons for it? 2) What kind of interrelation can be observed between long-term unemployment and the potential of the social and economic development of the regions? 3) What central and local attempts have there been to alleviate long-term unemployment? 4) What results did these initiatives have and what were the reasons for their success or failure? 5) What foreign models can be followed when trying to alleviate long-term unemployment? 6) Which are the economic sectors, in which employment of those long-term unemployed is the most possible? The research was carried out by the horizontal work-team of rural development of the Centre for Studies Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.repor
