THE FINANCIAL SITUATION OF PENSIONERS IN POLAND IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL NUMBER 1: NO POVERTY

The paper will discuss the problem of pensioner poverty in Poland, its elimination, as well as the question of the impact of social policy measures on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) called ‘no poverty’. The purpose of the article is to assess the financial situation of pensioners in Poland, taking into account the impact of supplementary pension benefits (understood in the study as the thirteenth and fourteenth pensions) on the level of poverty among pensioners in the context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Poland. The topic of pensioner poverty and its consequences is one of the aspects often overlooked in the discussion of sustainable development, where ‘poverty’ is simplified exclusively to a social issue, while it is an important aspect of economic development. To achieve the purpose of the study, the authors used statistical data describing the problem of poverty and changes in this area in the period 2010-2024 (where possible, a wider range of data has been provided to provide a more complete picture of the phenomenon), based on data from the Statistics Poland and the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS). The analyses carried out indicate a short-term positive impact on the proportion of poor pensioners in Poland, but at the same time little effectiveness of the benefits known as 13th and 14th pensions.