Dumpling Index 2025: Why is ice cream a luxury today, when it used to be a cheap pleasure?

The price of ice cream has gone up – the salary not so much

According to data collected by Pénzcentrum, in 2025 an average of 600 forints will be charged for a scoop of ice cream – mainly in the Balaton pastry shops – which is a 10 percent increase compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, the average salary reached 668,100 forints, which may seem like an impressive amount at first glance, but if we compare it with the data from 1970, a different picture emerges: then the average gross monthly salary was 2,222 forints, but with that amount one could buy more than 4,000 scoops of ice cream.

In 2025, the same salary would be enough for only 1,113 scoops – this means that, measured in purchasing power, a scoop of ice cream costs three and a half times as much today as it did in 1970. Since then, wages have increased 300 times, but the price of ice cream has increased more than 1,000 times.

Why has ice cream become so expensive?

The answer is made up of several factors. Artisanal ice cream is particularly sensitive to rising costs: raw material, energy and labor costs have soared in recent years, all of which are built into prices. The post-2022 inflation wave has only exacerbated the situation, as the inflation shocks of the 1990s had done before.

While nominal wages have risen decade after decade, the purchasing power of real wages has been much less likely to follow this trend – especially in the case of food, including artisanal products.