Financial Morality of Poles 2026: Debt Is a Duty, but Exceptions Are Growing

Poles increasingly justify financial misconduct against institutions

Nearly 90 percent of Poles say repaying debt is an absolute moral duty, but that rigor softens once the question turns to specific situations. Taking undeclared cash-in-hand work to avoid wage garnishment by a bailiff is now justified by 58.0 percent of respondents, and frequently switching bank accounts to dodge a bailiff seizure is justified by nearly half. These are among the findings of the 11th edition of “Financial Morality of Poles 2026,” a report from the Polish Financial Companies Association (Związek Przedsiębiorstw Finansowych, ZPF).

The survey was conducted by Biostat on behalf of ZPF in February and March 2026, on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Polish adults aged 18 and over. The project has run annually since 2016, allowing the tracking of long-term shifts in public attitudes toward consumer misconduct in personal finance.

Declarations versus specific situations

Responses to the general question of whether debt repayment is always a moral duty have stayed high for eleven years running, but have been drifting down. In 2016, 97 percent of respondents agreed; by 2026 that figure was 88 percent. At the same time, the share of undecided respondents has grown from 1 percent to 8 percent. The share of people flatly denying the obligation remains small, hovering between 2 and 4 percent over the years.

Prof. Anna Lewicka-Strzałecka, the report’s author, notes that this gap between a general declaration and the assessment of specific behavior is a recurring pattern — people tend to be more demanding at the level of abstract moral principles than when judging concrete, detailed situations.

A hierarchy of tolerance: from loan fraud to undeclared work

Respondents were asked whether nine specific consumer behaviors could be justified, ranging from the most strictly judged to the most widely tolerated. The spread is wide: from 10.1 percent tolerance for using someone else’s identity document to obtain a loan, to 58.0 percent tolerance for taking undeclared work to avoid wage garnishment.

The report’s authors stress that this ranking has stayed largely stable for eleven years — behaviors at the top and bottom rarely swap places, while shifts mostly occur in the middle of the list. They link this to a distinction between actively initiating a crime (using someone else’s ID) versus reacting to, or taking advantage of, an opportunity (such as not correcting a cashier’s error in one’s own favor).

Who justifies misconduct most

The Index of Acceptance of Unethical Financial Behavior (IAUFB) — a composite measure of tolerance for misconduct, standing at 42.0 for the full sample — varies most by gender and age. Men report notably higher permissiveness than women, and the youngest respondents show tolerance roughly 1.6 times higher than those aged 65 and over.

A third factor is the respondent’s relationship with financial institutions. The highest permissiveness (IAUFB of 63.3) is found among households that took out a loan and are struggling to repay it, as well as among people who feel wronged by banks, loan companies, or insurers. Respondents fully satisfied with their bank’s services show permissiveness well below average, at 35.2.

The report also includes a regional breakdown of the IAUFB across Poland’s voivodeships (fig. 6). Given how that figure was rendered in the original document, only the two extremes stated explicitly in the text are cited here: the highest tolerance was recorded in the Opolskie and Lubuskie voivodeships (47.7), and the lowest in Pomorskie (35.0). Other regional figures are not reproduced, to avoid imprecise attribution.

Why Poles justify misconduct

The dominant argument behind justifying consumer misconduct is a belief that financial institutions — lenders, insurers, bailiffs, tax offices — are themselves not always fair. That argument dominates, for instance, among those justifying frequent bank account switching to dodge a bailiff (74.4 percent of responses) or inflating an insurance claim (69.1 percent). In two cases — undeclared work and withholding information that would block a loan — the leading justification is instead the individual’s difficult financial situation.

Not all debts are equal

This year’s edition also asked, for the first time, about perceptions of unpaid obligations themselves. Seven in ten respondents attribute a friend’s unpaid debt to external circumstances rather than poor payment morality — but once it becomes clear the debtor has the money and simply chooses not to pay, 71 percent switch to a negative judgment.

Asked which types of debt are most harmful to the economy and society, respondents most often named unpaid child support and business arrears owed to other companies. Small consumer debts and unpaid loans between family members or friends were seen as least harmful.

What drives Poles to pay on time? The survey suggests fear of consequences outweighs moral conviction: the strongest motivators were avoiding legal trouble and avoiding extra costs, while the weakest was concern for one’s reputation with family or at work.

An index without a clear trend

Over the longer run, since 2019, the IAUFB has fluctuated between 41.0 and 46.2, without a clear upward or downward trend — the 2026 reading is slightly higher than the year before. The report’s authors read this as evidence that a broad “gray zone” of tolerance for consumer misconduct in personal finance persists, largely independent of the economic cycle or the political climate.