The purpose of the paper was to determine the degree of similarity between the distribution of total monthly expenditures per capita in the individual voivodeships and to single out voivodeships most similar in that respect. All calculations were carried out based on non-identifiable individual data from the household budget survey by the Central Statistical Office. What is really important is the fact that surveying budgets by the CSO is conducted using the representative method, which allows for the generalization of the obtained results over all households in Poland. The paper included 37,427 analyzed households which were grouped into sixteen statistical populations with respect to the voivodeships. Two research tasks were implemented. The first concerned verification whether the distribution of spending per capita in individual voivodeships was the same. In order to complete this task relevant statistical hypotheses were set and verified using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The verification procedure was performed for each pair of voivodeships, i.e. one hundred and twenty times.The significance level of 0.01 was adopted, and therefore the risk of rejection of a true hypothesis was only 1 in 100 cases. The finalization of the first task has allowed the conclusion that the observed differences between the distributions of total monthly spending per capita in individual voivodeships of Poland are statistically significant, and thus the variable which is the subject of research has a different distribution in each of the voivodeships. The second research task was to divide the voivodeships into groups of most similar distributions. In order to accomplish this task the Wrocław taxonomy was employed. As
a measure of the degree of similarity of distributions λ (lambda) statistic was used, which is based on the maximum absolute value of the difference between two empirical cumulative distribution functions. On the basis of the value of the λ statistic calculated for each of the pairs of distributions the sixteen voivodeships were divided into three uniform classes. This division resulted in the creation of a single-element group, one eight-element group and one seven-element group. The single-element group comprised the Mazovian voivodeship, the eight-element group included the Lower Silesian, Silesian, Pomeranian, Opole, Łódź, West Pomeranian, Lesser Poland and Lubuskie voivodeships, and the seven-element group comprised the Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Podlaskie, Lublin, Greater Poland, Świętokrzyskie, Warmia-Mazury and Podkarpackie voivodeships. In 2012, the average monthly spending in the individual voivodeships amounted to: in the Mazovian voiv. PLN 1,330 per person, in the Lower Silesian PLN 1,139 per person, in the Silesian voiv. PLN 1,123 per person, in the Pomeranian voiv. PLN 1,081 per person, in the Opole voiv. PLN 1,079 per person, in the Łódź voiv. PLN 1,075 per person, in the West Pomeranian voiv. PLN 1,057 per person, in the Lesser Poland voiv. PLN 998 per person, in the Lubuskie voiv. PLN 996 per person, in the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voiv. PLN 947 per person, in the Podlaskie voiv. PLN 939 per person, in the Lublin voiv. PLN 938 per person, in the Greater Poland voiv. PLN 931 per person, in the Świętokrzyskie voiv. PLN 884 per person, in the Warmia-Mazury voiv. PLN 865 per person and in the Podkarpackie voiv. PLN 848 per person. In turn, the average difference in monthly spending of residents of the Mazovian voivodeship in 2012 amounted to PLN 1,171 per person, the Lower Silesian voiv. PLN 854 per person, the Silesian voiv. PLN 783 per person, the Pomeranian voiv. PLN 843 per person, the Opole voiv. PLN 606 per person, the Łódź voiv. PLN 755 per person, the West Pomeranian voiv. PLN 731 per person, the Lesser Poland voiv. PLN 649 per person, the Lubuskie voiv. PLN 581 per person, the Kujawsko-Pomorskie voiv. PLN 635 per person, the Podlaskie voiv. PLN 712 per person, the Lublin voiv. PLN 793 per person, the Greater Poland voiv. PLN 675 per person, the Świętokrzyskie voiv. PLN 578 per person, the Warmia-Mazury voiv. PLN 700 per person, the Podkarpackie voiv. PLN 478 per person.
