GDP per capita and living standards of inhabitants of poviats in łódzkie voivodship

Abstract

GDP is widely regarded as a measure of the economic success of countries and regions. The Central Statistical Office provides data on the value of GDP for the whole economy as well as for voivodships and subregions, but information on the level of poviats is not available. Meanwhile, poviats can be treated as closing local economies identified with a given labour market or functional area. Estimating GDP per capita would allow measuring economic activity in these regions. In the presented research the GDP per capita in poviats of łódzkie voivodship was estimated. This indicator is a measure of economic activity, but it does not describe economic and social well-being. A cate- gory more comprehensively describing important aspects of life, such as the quality of health care, the state of the environment, the availability of cultural goods, is the standard of living. Within the framework of the research a ranking of poviats according to the standard of living was created and groups of similar poviats were distinguished. The method of linear ordering according to the first component extracted by PCA method and the k-means method were used. The study was conducted for the years 2019 and 2020. The highest values of GDP per capita were observed in the poviats with city status and the poviats neighbouring Łódź. These poviats were also characterised by the highest standard of living. The group of poviats with the lowest standard of living mainly included the least urbanised ones. The comparison of GDP per capita and living standards showed that these categories are correlated to a moderate degree. In 2020, despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the łódzkie voivodship had the positive, highest dynamics of total gross domestic product in Poland, which translated into the performance of the poviats. The impact of the pandemic was not particularly visible in any of them, in terms of large declines in GDP or living standards.