Wykształcenie a poziom i struktura wydatków ludności w starszym wieku

Changes in the level of education of the population occuring in the contemporary Polish society pose a requirement of including this process in to forecasting studies concerning the population’s needs. The article aims at presentation of finding of researches conducted within the framework of the Key Research Project No. 11.5 on the impact of the educational background on the volume and structure of consumer spending in the case of the older fraction of the society. The analysis encompassed budgets of households run by the retired people, which were the object of studies carried out by the Chief Statistical Office in the years 1974 and 1976, and - for comparative purposes - budge ts of households run by people employed in the socialized economy. There was performed the statistical analysis and were estimated parameters of the demand function, in which incomes, age, and educational background of the "head" of the family were treated as independent variables. The results produced by the analysis showed that the income level of a household represented a factor differentiating most strongly the volume and structure of the consumer spending. The educational background appeared to play a less significant role in families of the retired than in families of the people professionally active in the national economy. Nevertheless it is a factor which should be reckoned with in programmes concerning the consumer demand also due to its indirect in fluence - through increase of the population's incomes.