A crisis is coming, the likes of which Poles have never seen before.

• In the coming years, the decline in population will have a significant impact on the Polish economy.
• The consequences of this process will affect the entire society - regardless of age or professional status.
• Reversing unfavorable trends requires consistent, long-term actions based on a well-thought-out demographic strategy.

Poland is on the verge of deep problems related to population decline. According to money.pl, fewer than 250,000 children will be born in Poland in 2024, the lowest number in the country's post-war history. The fertility rate is just 1.16, while it should exceed 2.1 to ensure a stable population.

Experts agree that demographic changes will soon impact the Polish economy. As Dr. Tomasz Jedynak, professor at the Krakow University of Economics, noted in an interview with money.pl, demographic challenges will gradually emerge and intensify in various areas of the country's operations.

One of the first such areas will be education, where in smaller towns schools will have to be closed due to insufficient numbers of students, followed by higher education and the labor market, he explains.

The health care system will also experience problems, where - as we read - an increasing number of elderly patients will be faced with shrinking staff.

The pension system will feel the most severe effects of the demographic crisis. Given the current minimum retirement age, and given increasing life expectancy, the system will respond by declining the so-called replacement rate (an indicator that shows what percentage of a retiring person's final salary constitutes their future pension benefit).

As we wrote in CIS, in order to avoid the worst, Poland needs comprehensive and long-term solutions that:

• take into account the financial stability of families,
• will encourage women to combine motherhood with professional activity.

Krzysztof Inglot, a labor market expert and founder of Personnel Service, believes that demographics are one of Poland's greatest challenges. "If we don't take immediate action, the consequences will be irreversible —both for the labor market and the pension system," he says.