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Poland DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMY
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A family harvesting potatoes on a private farm.
Courtesy Polish Information Agency, Warsaw
This development strategy brought about a specific
pattern of
economic growth in Poland. As in the other centrally
planned
economies, rates of growth depended on increases in the
quantity
of inputs rather than on improvements in productivity.
Material
production remained high as long as greater quantities of
inputs
were available. This pattern of growth priorities and the
emerging industrial structure left no possibility of
raising
wages significantly. Wages had been reduced during the
first
industrialization drive of the early 1950s. For this
reason, the
Polish standard of living lagged behind that of Western
Europe as
the continent recovered from World War II. Already in the
first
postwar decade, awareness of this disparity began to cause
social
unrest, a situation that became a tradition during the
next
thirty-five years.
Data as of October 1992
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