Demographic changes and problems of social security in Poland

The main purpose of the paper is to determine the scale of demographic process of the ageing of the Polish population and to describe its impact on social security system.

The Polish society is currently in the process of changes. These changes concern, among others: declines in the number of newly concluded marriages, an increase in the number of divorces, the use of alternative forms of marital-family life (single), a decline in births and the phenomenon of depopulation. Population ageing is a modern demographic process of unprecedented scale and intensity. The prediction is that in the matter of time the process will intensify, which will result in a fundamental shift in the relationship between the youth and elderly. Demographers emphasize that Poland belongs to that countries where that change will be highly visible. Polish society is an ageing population, struggling with the problem of the lack of generational replacement. Analyses carried out in this paper show that the ageing of society is a multidimensional process that sets new contexts in many important areas of socio-economic life. In future it will have huge impact on the social security system.

The research used the method of statistical comparative analysis of social data and the method of content analysis.

Key words: demography, social security, strategies of solving social problems, ageing of the population.