ABSTRACT
In Poland as in Hungary, family size and the ratio of earners to dependents are major sources of differences in per capita household income. The larger the household, the smaller the probability of belonging to the higher income brackets. In Poland, as in other socialist countries, the level of the average wage per earner contributed only slightly to the differentiation of households' per capita income. Although distributional data on per capita household income in Poland are very scarce and incomplete, the available figures indicate that by and large the status quo in relative dispersion was maintained in the pre-Solidarity period. The peasant household per capita income is substantially more unequally distributed than that of households in the socialized sector. The Polish peasantry were granted free health care only in 1972. Only in 1974 were old-age pensions granted to the Polish peasants, but with special strings attached for getting them.
