Changeability of social-economic factors in the development of population transformations of silesian towns

Abstract

The paper concerns the assemblage of towns of historical Silesia studied in three patters: 1) as a set of 183 urban centres, 2) in regional system (Lower Silesia, Opole Silesia, Upper Silesia), 3) in size-class pattern (large towns: >100 thousand inhabitants, medium: 20-100 thousand, small: <20 thousand). An attempt was made to identify correlations between the population number and features, which significantly influence population changes. These factors include the assemblages of demographic, infrastructural, economic and financial features. The analysis was performed for four time cross-sections, which represent various political, economic and social situation of Poland (years: 1977, 1985, 1994, 2001). The employed method of step regression made it possible to identify three clear trends of correlations between population and the selected social-economic factors: — in the scale of the whole territory of Silesia these correlations are rather small, but increasing in time (both before and after political transformation); — in regional pattern, there is a clear increase of correlations from the west to the east; — in the pattern of size-classes of towns - the strongest correlations occur in large towns, weaker in medium towns and the weakest in small towns.