GINI Country Report: Growing Inequalities and their Impacts in Poland

Most inequality measures and income concepts show a moderate, but steady growth in inequality in Poland since early 1990s. Inequality of market income is much higher than inequality in terms of other income concepts. In general, absolute poverty declined from 13.2% in 1993 to 3.9% in 2010. The situation is different with relative poverty rates, which were increasing up to 2004. Dynamics of consumption inequality is similar to the dynamics of income inequality – both types of measures show that inequality was rising steadily, but that the overall inequality growth was rather modest. Overall, it seems that Poland is more unequal with respect to wealth than most of Western countries, but less unequal than many other transition countries. Both individual and household based indices show that labour market participation declined. At the same time all data sources agree that there was a substantial increase in earnings inequality. However, educational attainment has improved significantly over the last decade. The share of tertiary graduates almost doubled since 1997 (rising from 7, 7% to 13, 8% in 2008 year).