POVERTY IN POLAND, 1978–88

Branko Milanovic

Review of Income and Wealth, 1992, vol. 38, issue 3, 329-340

Abstract: This paper considers the issue of poverty in Poland in the decade 1978–88, during which the Polish economy experienced a severe slump (1979–81), and started a modest recovery (1983–88). The estimated poverty rate increased from less than 10 percent of the population in the late 1970s to about 18–20 percent ten years later. The increase was almost entirely due to pauperization of the urban (workers and pensioners) households. As real wages decreased, the percentage of the poor workers’ households increased from 6 to almost 20 percent. The total number of pensioners, a social group with the highest poverty incidence, went up due to demographic trends and government policy of early retirement in response to market reforms undertaken in 1982–83. In addition, poverty incidence among pensioners increased to 25 percent. Overall, out of the total estimated number of 7 million poor, about 3.1 million are the new poor, i.e. people who before the crisis lived above the poverty level, and have since fallen below it. Such a deterioration in living standards, to a large extent limited to urban areas, probably had a significant impact on the ever growing disenchantment with the Communist regime which eventually resulted in its overthrow.

Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.1992.tb00429.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Poverty in Poland: 1978-88 (1991)
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:bla:revinw:v:38:y:1992:i:3:p:329-340

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0034-6586

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill

More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().