Winners and Losers of the Economic Growth and Social Progress in the New EU Countries

The majority of new member states of the European Union in recent years is undergoing complicated economic growth and social development. Despite relatively well progressing economic growth, the social progress is lagging significantly behind expectations causing frustration and disappointment of the population. This raises questions regarding the evaluation of the entire process of transformation these economies from centrally planned to an open market economies.

The comparison of the results of economic growth and social development indicates that the expected convergence of the social programs and achievements does not follow the politically foreseen trajectories. The high level of unemployment and high level of the at-risk-of poverty population raises question regarding the nature of economic growth and its impact on the social progress and quality of life. Particularly situation of the young people, families with children as well as groups of seniors is disturbing and quoted frequently.

The goal of this paper is to study the relevant data on the above described situation in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to derive the new findings and conclusions in identifying the winners and losers of the economic growth and social progress in these countries.

The methodological tools - the descriptive statistics, regression analysis, cluster and discriminant analysis are applied. The special attention is devoted also to the quality of statistical data.