According to the official stats http://www.stat.gov.pl/english/index.htm unemployment rate is in the same order of magnitude as in Western European counties - in 1999 at 13% but most experts agree that the actual numbers are much higher, well over 20%. OTOH, many of the officially unemployed may be working in the informal sector.
Unemployment disproportionally affects people without higher education: 44% of men and 33% of women with vocational education an 37% of men and 30% of womene with elementary education of lower are reported unemployed in 1999. The rates for people with higher eductaion are 1.6% M and 2.3% W. It is interesting that women with higher education are more likely to be unemployed than men in the same category. The opposite is true for women and men with vocational or elementary education.
Crime rates: robbery and assault increased from 16.2 thousand in 1990 to 44.8 in 1999; aggravated assault from 3.9 to 12.9, embezzlement etc. from 6.0 to 27.6 other categories remained more or less the same. This suggest an increase of violence.
Incidence of many diseases actually decreased.
One has also to remember that the entire infrastructure (industry, transport, health care, education) had been built under socialism - the 'post-socialist' regimes mainly reap the benefits of that infrastructure. Giving the "marker economy" a credit for the increase in per capita GDP in thatcountry is nothing more than bourgeois charlatanry. Without state socialism, Poland would be just another impovershied third world country.
wojtek
-Im addition to it it seems that overall mortality decreased sligthly (from 10,2 to 9,5/1000) from 1990 to 2000, while it´s worth noting that mortality was probably stable from 1970 to 1990 (or maybe even increasing). Overall life expectancy increased 2 years in the last 10 years. However, the birth rate suffered a dramatic decrease (in the order of 50%) from 1990-2000. This is very difficult to explain, but the pattern is different from Russia, where both mortality increased and birth rate dropped by the same extent. Other interesting data is that agricultural output seems to be dropping (at leats while you considers. There seems to be a trend towards worsening of economic condictions (steadily decreasing growth rates, and a fast increasing of inflation). Didn´t find data on poverty. This seems not to be a fantastic result, despite the impressive gains in economical growth. Thank you for this data.
Alexandre Fenelon