Silver Economy and the Development Policy of Rural Areas in Poland

Abstract

This article is an attempt to assess to what extent silver economy may become a development driver of rural areas. In the first part of the paper, attention focused on the scale of population ageing in rural areas and assumptions of silver economy. Hereinafter in the article, selected national strategic documents and programmes are presented and assessed in terms of their usefulness for the implementation of the silver economy concept in rural areas. Thus, the aim of the paper is to present and assess the place of various areas of silver economy activity in the development policy of Polish rural areas to which the descriptive statistics method was applied. The analysis performed shows that currently in Poland progress has been achieved in operationalisation of activities in the area of silver economy at quite a general level -programmes addressed to seniors as the overall community are created. On the other hand, roadmaps are missing for the implementation of senior policy for specific segments of elderly populations inhabiting rural areas where unfavourable demographic situation is particularly visible and where the society ageing process proceeds at a much slower space than across the country.

Investigación sobre la producción científica en relación con la silver economy

“…Otros puntos de vista únicamente sitúan la silver economy como un elemento para potenciar el crecimiento económico, y buscan establecer una relación con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (Reshetnikova et al, 2021). En Polonia, cuando se trata de desarrollo sostenible, hacen referencia a la necesidad de implicar a las personas mayores del medio rural para que ese tipo de desarrollo sea posible (Sikora et al, 2019), pues faltaría un mayor desarrollo de propuestas que permitan implementar políticas concretas, puesto que esas áreas se enfrentan a problemáticas como la despoblación o el progresivo envejecimiento (Krzyminiewska y Pondel, 2019). Se incide por tanto en el potencial de la economía plateada en el desarrollo regional a nivel social, un concepto centrado en el ser humano y que puede reportar amplios beneficios no solo a las personas mayores, sino también a las empresas y a la sociedad en su conjunto (Krzyminiewska y Polcyn, 2018).…”

Growth prospects for the silver economy in the market segment of residential care services provided to dependent elderly people

“…The second important module is social innovation including, in particular, strategies, concepts, and organizational forms. The last is gerontology, which includes research and development of gerontotechnology (Krzyminiewska & Pondel, 2019).…”