ASSESSMENT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A BORDER AREA USING POLAND'S EASTERN BORDERLAND AS AN EXAMPLE

Socioeconomic development is one of the major research topics undertaken in economic sciences. It is a multidimensional and wide concept. The problems discussed in this paper are extremely essential not only from the point of view of countries, but also their regions and smaller territorial units. The development of border areas as one aspect of the aforementioned phenomenon is an important and interesting matter to look at. Such areas are universally regarded as peripheral and less-developed. Peripherality is a complex notion, although it is accepted that geographic accessibility is not the only or prevailing determinant of the development of lands situated along state borders. The purpose of this paper is to assess the socioeconomic development of Poland's eastern borderland. The borderland encompasses three regions, or voivodeships: Podlaskie, Lubelskie and Podkarpackie. Perkal's Index was used to assess the level of their socioeconomic development. The data to build the model on was derived from the Central Statistical Office. The analysis was carried out for 2004 and 2016 for all the 16 voivodeships of Poland, which allowed for comparisons to be made between them. The research showed that the level of socioeconomic development differed between the regions. In 2004, the three eastern borderland voivodeships scored the lowest in terms of the development indices when compared to the rest of the country. By 2016, the situation of the regions concerned had slightly improved. Among them, Podkarpackie Voivodeship had developed the most.