This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers
Poland is entering a period of sustained population decline. According to forecasts by Statistics Poland (GUS), the country’s population could fall to fewer than 35m by 2040, from 37.3m at the end of 2025. It should be noted, however, that neither official population figures nor forecasts fully account for immigrants. The actual number of residents may therefore be somewhat higher.
Interactive chart The scale of the change is even more striking at the level of the smallest municipalities. By 2040, as many as 27% of municipalities are expected to have fewer than 4,000 residents – twice as many as in 2015. Their number is projected to rise from 333 to 663.
Municipalities with fewer than 2,000 residents are, in turn, expected to account for 3.6% of all municipalities in 2040, up from just 0.6% in 2015. Their number is projected to increase from 16 to 92. What is more, in two extreme cases – Dubicze Cerkiewne (in the east of the country near the border with Belarus) and Krynica Morska (in the north of the country near the border with Russia) – GUS expects the population to fall below 1,000 as early as 2035.
Concentration in the east
Interactive chart Municipalities with small populations in 2040 will be scattered across Poland, but – as the map shows – they will be particularly concentrated in the eastern and north-eastern parts of the country. This will be especially true of the Podkarpackie, Lubelskie, Podlaskie (east of the country) and Warmińsko-Mazurskie (north-east of the country) provinces, as well as eastern Mazovia.
The consequences of depopulation
Depopulation could eventually lead to a reform of Poland’s administrative structure, including the merger of the smallest, shrinking municipalities into larger units. Maintaining a large number of local governments with very small populations may become increasingly inefficient, both in terms of the cost of running the administration and the provision of public services.
Primary schools are a case in point. If there are only a handful of pupils in a given grade across an entire municipality, maintaining a separate school will become very costly. Finding teachers could also prove challenging, while the cost of education per pupil will rise.
Merging municipalities, however, would be socially and politically very difficult. There is currently no formally defined minimum population below which a municipality cannot continue to operate.
Politically, another problem would be the elimination of some positions within municipal authorities, local government offices and the institutions they oversee. On the other hand, larger merged municipalities could have a greater capacity to finance public services, investment and professional administration.