Bukowski: Inequality increases and the state does not survey [talk]

Agnieszka Wiśniewska: Have you seen the fresh cover of “The Economist” with the slogan “Poland, different growth”?

Paweł Bukowski: We're moving on.

Poland is simply a champion, GDP is growing, people live more well – this is simply a communicative we have heard many times in fresh years. As I saw the Economist, I thought about your book Inequality in Polish, in which, together with Jakub Sawulski and Michał Brzeziński, you have shown that GDP is growing, but wealth spreads so that inequality besides grows. Which we didn't know much about so far.

We didn't know due to the fact that we didn't measurement them.

And that's a shame, due to the fact that – as you show in Inequality in Polish – inequality inhibits development.

That is why we are proposing to improve the quality of statistical data, including the regular measurement of inequalities.

How are they measured? Let's start with the profitable ones.

You must have information about how much people in the country earn.

So you gotta send pollsters to Poland to ask, “How much do you earn?” Simple.

And so far it has been done: researchers have drawn, say, 5,000 households, they have done a poll or poll, asking, "How much did you earn, how much did your husband earn?" In addition, we are besides doing a survey of household budgets in Poland. It perfectly describes consumption, which is what people spend money on. specified investigation is very crucial and we besides usage it.

But?

But it's not adequate to measurement inequality precisely. They can even curve their image.

Why?

A comparatively tiny group of people influence inequality.

The richest ones?

Exactly. Imagine a kingdom where most people live modestly, and 1 king has almost everything. It's a society with utmost inequality. If we did a poll and sent out pollers all over the kingdom...

...I don't think the king will be drawn.

Not due to the fact that they're afraid of him, just due to the fact that the chance to draw 1 out of 30 million is close to zero.

Fortunately, we have rankings of 100 richest Poles and there are the kings themselves described.

Yeah, that gives you any orientation. But these data are inactive imperfect.

And that's why you wanted to catch this king to measure.

Yeah. taxation records come in with help. They are besides not perfect, but have a large advantage: this is not a test. Almost everyone has to file a PIT, especially the richest ones. However, taxation data are not good for describing citizens with the lowest incomes, because, for example, people on benefits or students do not submit PITs. So they're just not there.

That's why you gotta combine data from different sources?

Exactly. The polls describe the majority of the population well, including those with low incomes. taxation data gives insight into the wealthiest situation. This needs to be weighed down accordingly.

Was it easy to get taxation records?

That depends. any are accessible, any are more hard to obtain.

Let's start with the available ones.

My first job, covering 120 years past inequality in Poland, it is based on taxation data published by the Ministry of Finance. all year, the ministry publishes a brochure. It utilized to have respective 100 pages, present – several.

But we can inactive learn from them?

Yeah. 1 can calculate how many people fall into the second taxation threshold and what is the wealthiest income. This allows you to estimation the concentration of income.

In the book you compose that we have the data since 1892, erstwhile the first modern taxation strategy was introduced in the Prussian partition. Where's the data?

Some are already digitized, any in libraries and archives. Their structure is amazingly coherent over the years: we have taxation thresholds and information about the number of people above the threshold and their income.

And on that basis, how much money does it go to the richest 1 percent?

Yes, with Paret's distribution – this is simply a mathematical model describing the distribution of income.

If specified data are available and consistent, why don't you analyse it yourself?

It's a occupation for scientists. That's how it is all over the world. The state does not analyse historical data.

Wouldn't a ministry request any kind of analysis of this kind of data?

The Ministry of Finance has individual data, which is simply a immense database containing information about millions of Poles, more specifically their data from PIT. Each evidence includes residence, gender, age, income. However, there is no information about education.

These data are very sensitive, so they can't just circulate. The Ministry or central bank uses them for their own needs, i.e. to measure the effects of taxation changes. But they are not available to scientists.

Why?

Because there is no formal procedure that would let the scientist to say: “I want to analyse poorness in 2000, delight access the origin data”. And only the work on specified data gives the anticipation to carry out detailed analyses – e.g. by generations, regions, etc.

Instead, researchers only have the 15 pages in the pdf...

Exactly. But in my second work – written with the Ministry of Finance – we managed to usage the PIT data. This allowed us to show a more detailed image of inequality.

So this is the data that's hard to get to.

Yeah. Unfortunately, they only cover the 21st century. Earlier data is simply missing, either in an illegible format, or missing. Developing specified a base backwards would require immense resources – time, people, infrastructure.

We haven't even licked the subject of property inequality yet...

This is simply a completely different issue. On the subject of property we have actually only 1 poll from 2016, which is analysed by Michał Brzeziński in our book. Unfortunately, this poll is heavy undervalued by the wealthiest assets. There are besides lists of the richest Poles – that's all.

So we'd request any kind of property taxation to collect this data?

Not necessarily a tax, it would be adequate to have a wealth inventory. And this is not a utopia, due to the fact that Poland has already done this in the 1920s. It was made to taxation those who took possessions in the war.

How about Poland from the Economist cover?

She could do it.

How could the Polish state benefit from the findings of scientists?

The government can come and say: “We request to realize this and this phenomenon better – aid us”. It happens sometimes, but rarely. This is what I did with the Ministry of Finance. respective people realized that they lacked key cognition about Poland, but the data are – and invited researchers to cooperate. This has taught us much more about inequality than we knew before.

And after the book was published Inequality in Polish How many politicians have contacted you?

Zero. I tried to contact the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy myself, but unfortunately they were not interested. The Ministry of Finance is an exception. The CSO, in my opinion, could play a key function – it should be an institution that initiates change, connects the planet of discipline with administration.

Maybe the CSO could order an inequality survey to any investigation institutes.

The methods are ready. I'm happy to explain to the Central Statistical Office how all this matters. The problem is deficiency of will. And logistics issues: PIT data is very sensitive, so you request to make a safe environment in which a scientist can work on them. But first, the State must recognise that it should “search itself”.

The state encourages citizens to survey prevention, but does not analyse itself...

It's most likely the same intellectual mechanics – the fear that something will be detected. In the context of the state, it turns out that we are doing something wrong. Or that the media will catch on...

Speaking of the media, after the election, Kuba Majmurek wrote about the "publicist-expert exchange of explanations". In a little elegant version we call it in the editorial "The Ass Data Institute". Media could besides usage a greater culture of working with data, not relying on conjecture and anecdotes.

Let me give an example from Britain, where this strategy works well. There are actually 5 key actors: a government that needs data, a statistical office (ONS) that processes it, universities that answer large questions, think tanks that respond faster and more operationally and yet the media that give it publicity.

Which of these actors do you miss most in Poland?

CUS. He could be the link between discipline and politics, but present he is not doing this role. Universities are, but in Poland the impact of discipline on reality is not appreciated. Think tanks are, but underfunded. And media frequently do not separate between a valuable study and a text written under the thesis.

Why is that important?

If the GUS were to become specified a data center – a hub that creates information infrastructure and allows think that people usage this data – then suddenly, erstwhile Prime Minister Tusk or another politician enters the platform and announces: “We will destruct poorness by this law”, an organization could appear that would say, “we counted it, sir, and the data say otherwise.”

And then the media could react, "Mr. Prime Minister, what do you say?"

That's what it looks like in Britain. A fewer months ago Prime Minister Keir Starmer pursued a policy that, according to 1 of the think tanks, would drive respective tens of thousands of children into poverty. The media grilled him for weeks. Finally, he partially withdrew from this policy.

Let's go back to inequality. Do we know everything about them today?

Nope. We inactive don't know much about farmers due to the fact that they don't make PITs, and KRUS doesn't want to share data with scientists. We know besides small about the impact of COVID-19 pandemics in Poland and the settlement of Ukrainian refugees after the outbreak of a full-scale invasion of Russia. We can presume that the increase in inflation has left a negative mark. We have reason to believe that inequality has changed. But at this point, we can only speculate.

* Oh, my God *
On the next weekend 11-13 July 2025, Paweł Bukowski will be a panelist at the gathering Concilium Civitas in Warsaw.

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Paweł Bukowski — prof. of Economics at University College London and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He besides collaborates with the London School of Economics. It examines the causes and effects of economical inequality. He is co-founder of the Prosperity Foundation for Generation and a associate of the Concilium Civitas.