3.2 The group indices of the aggregated Local Human Development Index 3.2.1 Welfare Welfare may improve access to high-quality education, health care and better housing. What seems key here are the resources at our disposal on which our goals and targets depend. This has been captured by the Welfare Index (WI). The national HDI is calculated based on the national income per capita. For the level of voivodeship and county another measure, which better reflects the average level of disposable income, had to be identified. The Welfare Index is calculated as the total of taxpayers’ pre-taxation income (tax declarations: PIT-36, PIT-36L, PIT-37)16 plus income from agriculture based on comparative fiscal hectare and income on social security and other public policy duties – social securities and family policy expenditures in the budgets of local governments (community and county, excluding security due to natural disasters) divided by the total number of the county’s inhabitants. To ensure comparability of income achieved in the following years of the analysed timeframe, we have calculated the values based on 2007 prices. Generally speaking, there are two financial streams – labour related income and social transfers. The first is comprised of income from labour activity, pensions, retirements and agriculture. The second stream is the income from social security and family policy which are related to low income thresholds, but increase the total financial resources per capita at the same time. The best way to estimate the disposable income would be by applying the corrected net income after taxation, which represents the average total disposable income per household. This method however could not be combined with other income. The proposed Welfare Index is based on all available administrative and public sources of data on individual income. It includes all sources of income: from contracts, full-time employment to economic activity, income from agriculture, pensions and retirements as well as income from social security and family policy. The Welfare Index is the closest substitute to disposable income, standardised and showing regional differentiation of individual income. Its drawback is that it does not include income from “shadow economy”. It is not calculated into the results as a clear definition on how to include the additional income in a territorial perspective does not exist. We must remember that in a number of regions and counties “shadow economy” may play an important role, however estimating their scale on the territorial level would require a separate analysis. The observed LHDI dynamics seems to have remained generally the same since the year 2007, despite the fact that the analysis covers the period of economic depression in Poland. All regions in Poland are performing better year by year in regards citizens’ income. Income inequalities between the richest and the poorest regions of the country are very slowly diminishing. In the poorest regions, the growth of income is supported by the low staring level and is fuelled by the generally low level of wages. Despite low base effect in poorer regions t the income growth dynamics is higher amongst the richest regions (Mazovia, Silesia, Lower Silesia).
16 Municipality income from the agricultural tax is divided by the tax value from one comparative fiscal hectare times the average income from one comparative fiscal hectare of individual agricultural household activity, which is the basis of the agricultural tax for agricultural land.
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