Agata Mróz, the report's author, described depopulation as a "hidden tax" in the study, titled Disappearing Local Poland: The Financial Consequences of Depopulation in Municipalities.
Mróz said the persistence of population decline affects local government finances and gradually limits the ability of local governments to generate their own budget revenues, according to Rzeczpospolita.
The report found that in municipalities where the population has declined, the per capita cost of public services increased faster than in other municipalities.
"Demographic changes have divided counties and regions into winners and losers," Piotr Szukalski, a demographer at the University of Łódź in central Poland, told Rzeczpospolita.
He defined "losers" as those municipalities from which at least one in three young people migrated over the last two decades.
According to the report, the counties that experienced the steepest population declines were Hrubieszów and Krasnystaw in southeastern Poland's Lubelskie province near the Ukrainian border and Bartoszyce in the northeastern Warmińsko-Mazurskie region near Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
About 40 percent of young people left each of the three counties, moving to larger cities with more attractive labour markets, according to the Polish Economic Institute, which is a Warsaw-based think tank.
Marek Wójcik, an expert with the Association of Polish Cities, said local governments and communities would find it easier to address demographic challenges "if legislators were more supportive of such solutions," according to Rzeczpospolita.
(gs)
Source: PAP, rp.pl