Change in the level of socio-economic development in Poland in the subregional dimension

Abstract

The compilation involved an analysis of the level of socioeconomic development at the NUTS-3 subregion level in Poland, based on 60 indicators classified within 4 subcomponents (factors) of regional development: material capital, human capital, natural environment and both innovativeness and entrepreneurship. The purpose of the article is to present the varied nature of the socio-economic level of development in Poland based on the NUTS-3 subregion concept. The level of socio-economic development, as well as the level of its shaping factors, is presented based on a synthetic gap exhibiting the taxonomic distance of a particular subregion in terms of the established pattern of development. The examination was carried out in the static dimension (based on the values of the indicators in 2019) as well as in parallel with the dynamic dimension (based on changes in the values of the gaps in the years 2010–2019). In the compilation, a hypothesis which was tested according to which the socio-economic development of the subregions in Poland is highly varied, and its highest level is registered in the largest provincial cities: Warsaw, Cracow, Wrocław and Poznań, and the lowest in the subregions far away from these major cities, which constitute the centers of development.