The crisis impact on human capital formation in Poland

Abstract

Human capital, defined as a knowledge resource, know-how, skills and motivation cumulated in production age society, becomes a fundamental factor in competition of a country and determines the creation of an information society. The purpose of this article is to scrutinise the state of human capital in Poland comparing to the situation in other European Union‘s countries and to evaluate a possibility of human capital formation after the crisis reality. The problem is very complex, that is why the article describes how the crisis influences the migration decisions of the Polish people. Departures and arrivals from migration directly affect situation on the labour market and have impact on conditions of human resources. The methodology in the paper is based on desktop research and general statistics with multidimensional comparative analysis methods used as a taxonomic synthetic measure.

The main finding of the paper is that there is a strong divergence between human capital formations in Poland, countries recently engaged (UE11) and other Western European countries (UE15). It is difficult to notice one-way influence of the economic crisis on human capital formation. In Poland during the crisis period migration was inhibited on one hand, but on the other, the quantity of young people with tertiary education from agglomeration leaving Poland increased. The article represents distinctive scientific research, which could be used in formation of labour market and migration policies in Poland.