The Financial Situation At A Municipal Government Level Vs. Standards Of Living Of The Population In The Wielkopolskie Voivodship: A Spatial Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to identify the (spatial) relationships between the standards of living of the population and the financial capacity of municipalities, with particular focus on rural areas, based on 2017 data. The survey covered all of the 226 municipalities of the Wielkopolskie voivodship. As a result of the multidimensionality of economic categories covered by the analysis, this study used the TOPSIS method to assess the standards of living of the population and the financial capacity of municipalities. An analysis of spatial autocorrelation between the synthetic indicators was carried out based on Moran’s I statistics (local and global) to identify the clusters of municipalities reporting a similar level of aspects covered by this study. A spatial regression analysis was carried out to assess the strength of spatial relationships between the synthetic indicators of the standards of living and the financial capacity of municipalities. A strong correlation exists between the synthetic indicators. Moreover, both the indicator of the standards of living in the municipalities considered and the indicator of the municipalities’ financial capacity demonstrate a statistically significant spatial autocorrelation. The spatial autocorrelation model developed in this study takes account of the mean error in neighbouring locations to better explain the dependencies between these aspects than a traditional least-squares model.