Quality of Life and Quality of Living in Rural Communes in Poland

Quality of life is an issue taken into account increasingly more often as one of the main elements of the evaluation and in comparisons between countries, regions and communes (local governments). The aim of this article is to show the relationship between quality of life and quality of living in rural communities at varying levels of socio-economic development. The analysis of both aspects yields the opportunity to observe the relationship between objective resources of the local community as well as the level of their socio-economic condition and level of satisfaction of the inhabitants, the latter of which results from, inter alia, their ability to meet specific needs within the local environment. The presented analysis leads to several main conclusions. The first is that the rural residents who participated in the study were characterized by a relatively high satisfaction with their own lives. The main source of their life satisfaction was the family sphere. The greatest source of dissatisfaction was their financial situation. The second conclusion comes from the analysis of their subjective assessment of their quality of living in terms of the local commune. The examined residents overall positively assessed the conditions of living in their community. They were content, first and foremost, with the natural environment and security. The lowest level of satisfaction with living in the commune was associated with such aspects as technical infrastructure, transport links, activities of NGOs and political parties, and the lack of possibilities to exert influence on what is happening in the commune. However, it is difficult to specify general correlations that would clarify the relationship between quality of life and quality of living in rural communities. The regression analysis confirmed the weak link between these phenomena. The final conclusion confirms the thesis of the high heterogeneity and diversity of rural communes in Poland, even within a socially, culturally and economically coherent area of a voivodeship (province).