The level of socio-economic development of regions in Poland

Abstract

The development of regions within one country is an uneven process. States seek to reduce internal inequalities between particular regions through the implementation of appropriate economic policies, as is the case of Poland. The aim of the study is to evaluate the level of socio-economic development of regions in Poland (voivodships) in the years 2013– 2019. For this purpose, a taxonomic analysis based on Hellwig’s development measure was conducted and the Euclidean distance was applied to assess the difference between the obtained pattern and particular voivodships. On the basis of data provided by the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland and through linear ordering, two rankings of voivodships were created: one reflecting their socio-economic development excluding environmental protection aspects and the other focusing solely on the issue of environmental protection. Low values of the coefficient of variation relating to a part of the analysed variables indicated that the development level of voivodships in the analysed period is in many respects very similar. The variables crucial for determining the differences between voivodships show that Mazowieckie Voivodship occupies high positions in both rankings (and is the leader in the ranking of socio-economic development excluding environmental protection aspects), while Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodship is characterised by a low level of development illustrated by both rankings.