Subject and purpose of work: The objective of this work was to identify the factors which determine the social and economic development, present the disproportions in the development of regions, show the relations between the level of the economy and the pace of development of regions, and to determine the growth poles. Materials and methods: The spatial scope of the research covered 16 voivodeships and the time range included years 2005 and 2013. The sources of materials constituted: home and foreign literature, GUS (Central Statistical Office) data. The Pearson correlation coefficient and descriptive, tabular, graphic, index methods were used to analyse and present data. Results: The conducted research showed that there is a big disproportion between the regions. The increase in disparities is visible, among other things, concerning the unemployment level and percentage of people who work in the services’ sector. The voivodeships with the best economic situation and the highest level of factors determining the development were the growth poles. These voivodeships include definitely the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, then Śląskie, Wielkopolskie and Małopolskie Voivodeships. Conclusions: It has been confirmed that there is a correlation between the economic situation and the pace of development of regions. The calculated correlation coefficients allowed to assess that with regards to most of the features determining the regional development, there occurred moderate or strong significant dependency with the economic situation of the region.