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Poland Welfare Benefits
In the late 1980s, Poland spent about 22 percent of its
gross national product
(GNP--see Glossary)
on social benefits in the
form of monetary payments or services. At that time, over
5 million Poles received retirement or disability pensions,
and about 100,000 were added yearly in the latter category. In
the years of labor shortage, government incentives encouraged
pensioners to continue to work past retirement age
(sixty-five for men, sixty for women). In the early 1980s, the number
of invalids receiving benefits increased from 2.5 million to
3.6 million, straining the welfare system. The communist
system also
paid benefits to single mothers with preschool children,
sickness
benefits for workers, income supplements and nonrepayable
loans
to the poor, and education grants to nearly 75 percent of
students, in addition to providing nominally free health
care,
cultural and physical education facilities. By the
mid-1980s,
however, all the free, state-funded services were being
considered for privatization, fees, or rationing.
In the first postcommunist years, social support
programs for
the unemployed underwent important changes. The initial
postcommunist policy guaranteed unemployment benefits and
retraining regardless of the reason for a person's
unemployed
status. Benefits were to be paid indefinitely and were
based on
previous pay or on the national minimum wage for those who
had
never worked. Benefits included old-age, disability, and
survivors' pensions and compensation for work injuries,
sickness,
maternity, and family-related expenses. Although the
system
covered both industry and agriculture, enterprises in the
industrial sector paid much higher surcharges (usually 45
percent
of the worker's salary) to the benefit fund than did
either the
agriculture or housing sectors.
In 1991 and early 1992, a series of laws drastically
reduced
the coverage of the unemployment program. Under the
modified
policies, benefits no longer went to those who had never
been
employed; a twelve-month limit was placed on all payments;
and
benefit levels were lowered by pegging them to income the
previous quarter rather than to the last salary received.
This
reform immediately disqualified 27 percent of previous
beneficiaries, and that percentage was expected to rise in
ensuing years.
In 1992 the Warsaw welfare office divided its benefit
payments among 4,500 recipients of permanent benefits,
8,500
recipients of temporary benefits, and 25,500 recipients of
housing assistance. The public assistance law entitled one
person
per family to permanent benefits at the official minimum
subsistence level. Throughout Poland, the demand for
welfare
assistance grew steadily between 1990 and 1992, well
beyond the
financial and organizational capabilities of the state
system.
The shortage affected a wide range of social categories:
the
homeless and unemployed, AIDS victims, families of
alcoholics,
and the elderly. According to a 1991 study, 18 percent of
Polish
children lived in poverty. Thus, the postcommunist
conversion of
a state-sponsored and state-controlled economy
reverberated
strongly in the "social security" that communism had
promised but
very often failed to deliver in the 1980s.
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Numerous useful monographs cover all or parts of
Poland's
society and environment. The Poles by Stewart
Steven and
Janine Wedel's The Private Poland are anecdotal
treatments
of the general fabric of Polish society. Länderbericht
Polen is a collection of essays in German edited by
Wilhelm
Wöhlke covering religion, ethnic groups, health and
welfare, and
geography. Economic Reforms and Welfare Systems in the
USSR,
Poland, and Hungary, edited by Jan Adam, includes
treatment
of the postcommunist welfare structure. Kenneth R. Wulff's
Education in Poland is a detailed description of
the
subject before, during, and after the communist regimes.
Poland into the 1990s, edited by George Blazyca and
Ryszard Rapacki, contains informative chapters on social
structure in the communist era and on the condition of the
environment after communism. Aleksander Gella's
Development of
Class Structure in Eastern Europe relates the
evolution of
social classes in Poland to those found in surrounding
countries.
And George Kolankiewicz and Paul G. Lewis's Poland:
Politics,
Economics, and Societytreats a number of social issues
in the
context of the country's political and economic structure.
(For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of October 1992
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