Older adults were underrepresented in Budapest’s online participatory budgeting

Adults aged 65 and over took part in Budapest’s participatory budgeting far less than their share of the city’s population would predict, according to a descriptive case study published in the European Journal of Ageing. The study, led by Éva Berde with colleagues including József Golovics, Márton Katona, Judit Kálmán and Miklós Rosta, examined two consecutive cycles of the city’s participatory budgeting programme, in which residents propose and vote on civic projects.

The researchers analysed administrative participation data from the 2020/21 and 2021/22 cycles, the two rounds for which age information was recorded. During these cycles, participation was organised predominantly online. The descriptive analysis showed that older adults were underrepresented both in submitting ideas and in voting, relative to their share of Budapest’s population. Notably, their representation was even lower in the voting phase than in the idea-submission phase, suggesting that the two stages of the process did not exclude older residents equally.

The article frames this pattern against the concept of sustainable ageing, in which the inclusion of older adults in civic and political life is treated as an important dimension. The authors observe that digitalisation increasingly shapes how such engagement is organised and accessed, and that the Budapest programme’s reliance on online channels coincided with age-related digital inequalities in the population.

To place the participatory budgeting findings in context, the study also draws on survey-based data on parliamentary election turnout from an earlier period. The authors are careful to characterise this material as limited and indirect: it provides contextual evidence on age-differentiated civic engagement in selected electoral districts, indicating that older adults’ participation was higher than that of younger adults in those elections. This contrast is used to interpret, rather than to prove, the role of digital requirements in the budgeting process.

Taken together, the findings are consistent with the interpretation that digitally mediated participation requirements, in a context of age-related digital inequalities, may have contributed to age-differentiated patterns of inclusion in a formally open civic process. The authors emphasise that the process was open to all residents; the question they raise is whether its predominantly online design made that formal openness harder for some age groups to use in practice.

The study’s design imposes clear limits on what can be concluded. It is a descriptive case study based on limited administrative participation data covering only two cycles of a single city’s programme, and the election turnout data are from an earlier period and serve only as context. The article therefore does not claim to establish a causal effect of digitalisation on participation, and the version released under the journal’s open access policy is a peer-reviewed accepted manuscript that remains subject to further edits before the final version of record.

Even with those caveats, the authors argue the results carry policy weight. They conclude that digital institutional design may affect inclusion in later life, and they propose making participatory budgeting more accessible through more inclusive and hybrid forms of participation, so that residents who are less comfortable with online tools are not effectively sidelined from decisions about their own neighbourhoods.

Subject of Research: Age-differentiated participation of adults aged 65 and over in Budapest's predominantly online participatory budgeting.

Article Title: Challenges to sustainable ageing: the role of the generational digital divide in Budapest’s participatory budgeting

Article References: Berde, É., Golovics, J., Katona, M., Kálmán, J., & Rosta, M. (2026). Challenges to sustainable ageing: the role of the generational digital divide in Budapest’s participatory budgeting. European Journal of Ageing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-026-00939-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10433-026-00939-4

Keywords: participatory budgeting, sustainable ageing, digital divide, Budapest, older adults, civic participation, digital inequality, online voting, European Journal of Ageing, descriptive case study, inclusion, Challenges