Ocena adekwatności PKB per capita jako miary poziomu życia w powiatach
Assessment of the adequacy of GDP per capita in measuring the standard of living in Polish powiats

Summary/Abstract: Social development and the improving material living conditions have caused GDP to become increasingly less important in determining the standard of living, while intangible aspects, which are not included in the measure, are becoming dominant in this respect. The main aim of the study described in the article is to assess the extent to which GDP per capita may be considered a sufficient indicator of the standard of living in Polish powiats (second-level administrative division in Poland). Additional objectives are: to create rankings and identify the powiats with the highest values of the two analysed characteristics, to determine whether the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic varied across powiats and to assess whether the pandemic changed the relationship between the studied characteristics.The conducted analyses included the estimation of powiats’ GDP per capita using the author's modification of the methods proposed in the literature. Moreover, the values of this indicator were compared with the values of the synthetic measure of the standard of living based on Hellwig's composite measure, as were their spatial distributions. Data concerning 380 powiats for the years 2019 and 2020 were extracted from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. Based on the value of Spearman's correlation coefficient, it was found that in most powiats a high/low GDP per capita co-occurred with a high/low standard of living. However, there are cities with powiat status (mainly in south-eastern Poland) with a very high standard of living and values of GDP per capita in the third quartile group, which are surrounded by powiats with a much lower GDP and standard of living. The correlation between the studied characteristics is moderate and comparable in the analysed years, therefore an assessment of the population's standard of living based on GDP per capita only would prove inadequate. In 2020, compared to 2019, no significant changes occurred in the spatial distributions of the two variables nor were any significant shifts in rankings of powiats observed.

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