What are the poorest regions of Poland?

In what condition are these places? dirt roads etc? any pictures. Regions, towns etc, etc

Define what you mean by 'poor' - poor in employment prospects, capita per inhabitant...what exactly do you mean by 'poor'?

Eastern border lands and south-central countryside (I hear-tell.)

The Eastern half of Poland always has been the poorest and less developed. That was already so before partition time.
One only has to take a look on a map of the railway network.
The other side of the medal is that the nature and landscape are arguably the most beautiful there.

I "here-tell", that we are in Afghanistan and Iraq to bring democracy to the people. Do you believe that as well?

It is very hard to say which part of the Poland are the poorest.
The general view biased on GDP on the level of woievodship show that eastern Poland is poorer than western .
But if you look more carefully and you have travelled around Poland it turns out that the poorest regions are the country regions of northern and western Poland (old collective farming areas).

I have never seen around Chełm or Białystok such miserable people as in villages near Gubin at the German border or near Koszalin and Bartoszyce in the north.

It is easy to spot if you use country roads - in those regions roads that are on the map which was printed 30 years ago are today often overgrown by forests because inhabitants just do not use them because they don't own cars while in Hajnówka or Suwałki nearly every villager owns VW Golf or sth. and the country roads are repaired even by private people because they use it...

If you look as unemployment map it looks similarly to what I told - the highest unemployment (about 30%) is in the western and northern countryside and in the parts of Mazowieckie woievodship that lay far from the capital.

Kind regards

£ukasz

Podlaskie (North Eastern Poland) has now the best roads in Poland.


poranny.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100524/REGION99/211991195

Things are changing (EU-money).

Let's establish one thing.
How 'poor' does a person have to be to be considered 'poor' i.e. if he has a job, what is the limit below which you would consider his/her 'poor'.

Does owning your own house make you poor?
Does owning a car (albeit second hand) make you poor?
Does not having a job, but having other means of income make you poor?

Merged: What is the poorest province in Poland?

I'm just curious, I can't find it on the computer. Does anybody know what it is?

Lubelszczyzna...

Well Eastern Poland is poorer in general. But i guess the Podkarpacie region is kinda poor too.

That GDP table is 10 years old. However, as expected, the regions with the big economically important cities do best.

Most bigger cities do quite well. But almost all of the Polish countryside is still poor. The difference between Eastern and Western Poland is not very big. Except from the fact that there are a few more big cities in West.

It is a nice map:
epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/mapToolClosed.do;jsessionid=9ea7974b30ddcb577b72057a4716a43efec8fb927df4.e34SbxiPb3uSb40Lb34LaxqRb30Ne0?tab=map&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tgs00005&toolbox=types#

it is interactive, just move cursor over choosen region and you will see PPS value.
According to this map Podkarpackie is even poorer than Lubelskie. But as for statistics always some disbilief is needed. For example recently were others stats where some additional things were measured and it showed that some western regions were slightly worse..

As for you question "why east of Poland is poorer" it is a combination of factors like:
- it is quite rural (what wouldn't be bad thing alone if size of farms weren't so small there)
- it is far from let name it European core of wealth :-)
- it has worse infrastructure
- it has quite poor neighbourhood -> Ukraine and Belarus.

Well, on the bright side, those region in medieval and renaissance times was supposedly relatively rich given European standard of that time... so there is a hope :-)

I think that it may be Peterborough :-)

Is there any chance that PF will ever have a like button? I'd have loved to press in for that post.

The problem that a more than a few Poles are learning in places such a Peterborough is that while wages in the UK are far higher in whichever part of Poland they are from, costs are also much much higher.