The paper presents the latest studies on poverty and poorness in Poland and the authors' estimates in this regard. They show that income inequalities increased in Poland, in 1993 - 2004. Inequalities widened both in the upper tail of income distribution (increase of 9th decile to median ratio) and in the lower one (decrease of 1st and 2nd decile to median ratio), with stronger increase of inequalities above the median. However, poverty and utter poorness considerably decreased during this period, as measured by the percentage of households living below poverty and utter poorness thresholds. Moreover, extreme poverty incidence kept decreasing on a regular basis during these years. When comparing 2004 to 1993, one may conclude that poverty and poorness decreased during transformation, and extreme poverty was almost eliminated. Specifically, over the most recent years (2002 - 2004) poverty and poorness indicators kept improving for all groups of households.

Keywords: income inequality, poverty.

  Tomasz Daras, Leszek Zienkowski, Zbigniew Żółkiewski, Income Inequality and Poverty in Poland in 1993-2004 - plik pdf; (949 KB)