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Sustainable development is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and its assessment is not easy and cannot be measured and expressed by one characteristic. The authors made an attempt at designing a synthetic measure thanks to which changes in sixteen regions of Poland between 2003 and 2013 are presented with respect to the level of sustainability based on three components: social, economic, and environmental order. This enabled an analysis of the structure of sustainable development using the shift-share method. The force of impact of the internal structure was defined, along with external determinants of individual regions, which have influenced the level of sustainable development. The performed analysis showed that the indicators of sustainable development, both for individual regions and for the whole of Poland, had not changed significantly in the determined two moments of time (2003 and 2013). However, the increase in indicators for individual regions is greatly diversified, and in the majority of provinces has a negative character with a slight value. In several regions, positive values can be noticed, whereas the increase in their values is high. This diversity testifies to the uneven development of Polish regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]