Farmers' pensions and the Polish economic crisis

The Polish Government, in 1977, inaugurated a new pension program that made old-age and invalidity benefits available for the first time to most farmers in that country. The evolution and eventual failure of that program were closely intertwined with a growing national economic crisis, manifested in widespread popular unrest and culminating in emergence of the Solidarity movement. The farmers' pension program was originally presented as both a social security measure and a vehicle for improving agricultural efficiency. The economic situation was expected to benefit as farms of older owners were passed to younger, presumably more efficient, successors, with the state sometimes acting as intermediary. A further step to bind the social security concept to agricultural efficiency came through relating the pension amount to the quantity of produce the individual farmer sold to the state over a number of years. The failure of these provisions and other unpopular features of the new program was aggravated by inflation and continuing deterioration of the Polish economy.