POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITIES AS SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS - A TEST OF THE SPIRIT LEVEL CONCEPT (Bieda i rozpietosc dochodów jako zródla problemów spolecznych - test koncepcji poziomicy)

The aim of the article is to verify the assumptions by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett (2009) indicating a strong correlation between the inequality of income range and social problems evidenced in contemporary developed countries (the thesis is called the Spirit Level concept). In the article the concept is tested by the comparison of correlations between poverty measured according to the absolute interpretation (whose indicators are the percentage of people living on less than 5 euros a day and the evidence of difficulty in the payment of water, gas and electricity bills) as well as income range in a given country (measured by means of the Gini index) and such social problems as infant mortality per 1000 births and the number of homicides per 100 000 inhabitants. This relation has been tested in 20 European Union countries. The analyses indicate that the spread of absolute poverty (more than the scale of income inequalities) influences the intensification of social problems occurrences.