IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pes/ieroec/v9y2018i3p381-401.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional variety in quality of life in Poland

Author

Listed:
  • Paulina Nowak

    (Kielce University of Technology, Poland)

Abstract

Research background: Quality of life is viewed as the degree of people’s satisfaction of various needs, especially including material, spiritual, safety-related needs and life aspirations. The aspects taken into consideration are economic, spatial, environmental and cultural ones. Quality of life is therefore determined by various conditions in which a human lives and the source of which is the hierarchy of needs and a value system. At the same time, quality of life can be viewed in terms of collectivity (objective aspect) and an individual’s evaluation (subjective aspect). The former view shapes the existing living conditions and the latter results from the satisfaction from a specific person’s life, experiences and ambitions. The multidimensionality of the quality of life categories translates into difficulties in defining and measuring it, and constitutes an interesting research object. Purpose of the article: The purpose of the article is to diagnose and evaluate the variety of the quality of life in Polish voivodeships, in objective terms by building a synthetic measure allowing for estimating inequalities in the quality of life of regional communities. It was assumed that quality of life will be characterised by indicators grouped into the following areas: material living conditions, economic activity, health, education and living environment quality. Methods: The main method used for measuring quality of life is the linear ordering based on Z. Hellwig’s taxonomic measure which allows for organising voivodeships in terms of the quality of life of communities. Additionally, the cluster analysis (Ward’s agglomerative grouping method) was used, which allowed for distinguishing voivodeships similar in terms of the analysed phenomenon. Findings & Value added: During the realisation of the research goal, special attention was paid to the complexity of the quality of life issue and its measurement in terms of economy and rather important varieties in voivodeships were emphasized. The conducted analysis allowed for distinguishing groups of regions with the highest, high, low and the lowest quality of life.

Suggested Citation

  • Paulina Nowak, 2018. "Regional variety in quality of life in Poland," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 9(3), pages 381-401, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:pes:ieroec:v:9:y:2018:i:3:p:381-401
    DOI: 10.24136/oc.2018.019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.24136/oc.2018.019
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24136/oc.2018.019?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marlena Piekut, 2021. "The Consumption of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) by the European Union Households between 2004 and 2019," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-31, September.
    2. Judit Oláh & Zuzana Hajduová & Roman Lacko & Pavol Andrejovský, 2020. "Quality of Life Regional Differences: Case of Self-Governing Regions of Slovakia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-13, April.
    3. Beata Bieszk-Stolorz & Krzysztof Dmytrów, 2021. "Marketplace Trade in Large Cities in Poland," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-15, September.
    4. Gałecka Małgorzata & Smolny Katarzyna, 2019. "Criteria for the optimal financing model of public theatres," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 19(2), pages 119-136, June.
    5. Robert Szydło & Sylwia Wiśniewska & Małgorzata Ćwiek, 2020. "Multidimensional Inventory of Students Quality of Life—MIS-QOL," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Agnieszka Sompolska-Rzechula & Agnieszka Kurdys-Kujawska, 2020. "Quality of Life of Rural and Urban Population in Poland: Evaluation and Comparison," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 645-656.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    quality of life; welfare measures; regional variety; Hellwig’s method; Ward’s method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • R13 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pes:ieroec:v:9:y:2018:i:3:p:381-401. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adam P. Balcerzak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibgtopl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.