Justyna WILK, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Poland
Tomasz KOSSOWSKI, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Poland
Just like many other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland has experienced dynamic social and economic changes since the 1990s as a consequence of political transformation. These changes have resulted in a change of the attitude of Poles towards raising families and having children. Thus, the models of the functioning of Polish society and the family have been subject to transformation, which is characteristic of the theory of the second demographic transition. Demographic changes across Poland are also affected by population migration caused by several internal and external factors such as the accession to the European Union in 2004, transition in economy since 1989, and, therefore, changes in spatial and functional structure.
The aim of this article is to detect an underlying spatial process in population changes across 2477 Polish municipalities in 1995-2019. It characterises the Polish population in terms of changes in natural movement and migration. Firstly, we classify Polish municipalities according to Webb’s typology. Then, we detect a spatial dependence effect using the spatial autocorrelation methods for qualitative data (join-count statistics, local indicators for categorical data). Finally, we identify a set of spatial clusters to see how they fit in social, economic, and political changes of Poland in the last three decades.
Keywords: spatial dependence|natural movement|migration|depopulation|join-count
A105312JW