Income inequality in the 21st century Poland

Marek Skawiński (), Paweł Chrostek (), Paweł Bukowski () and Filip Novokmet ()
Additional contact information
Marek Skawiński: Ministry of Finance
Paweł Chrostek: Ministry of Finance; Institute of Economics
Paweł Bukowski: University College London; London School of Economics; Institute of Economics
Filip Novokmet: University of Bonn; World Inequality Lab
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eric Baird French

No 40, MF Working Papers from Ministry of Finance in Poland

Abstract: This paper combines micro-level tax data, household surveys and national accounts data to provide consistent series of income distribution in Poland over the 2000-2018 period. We find that inequalities in Poland are one of the largest in Europe. In 2018, the share of income accrued to the top 10% is 37.4%, to the middle 40% is 41.1%, and to the bottom 50% is 21.5%. The top 1% earns 13.4% of the total income. The increase in income inequality during this period was largely driven by high business incomes in top income shares. The extent of redistribution in Poland is modest. The tax system is regressive at the top of the income distribution due to lower taxation of business income and the low burden of social contributions. Finally, we show that top income groups are dominated by business owners, males, and big city dwellers, and these groups have been the largest beneficiaries of Poland’s strong growth since 2000. Gender inequality has been high and stable in Poland, with a steeply decreasing female share with income rank (e.g. the share of females in top 0.1% group was 18% in 2018).

Keywords: income inequality; income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2023-12-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gov.pl/web/finance/no-40-2023-p-bukows ... -21st-century-poland Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:mfplwp:0040

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MF Working Papers from Ministry of Finance in Poland Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ministry of Finance in Poland ().