Minimum standard of living, a constant of research and social policy work option

Abstract

The article gives us a true picture of the purchasing power of goods and services from the market. The incomes of many types of customers such as: persons, families, households are a good indicator to measure the poverty in our country, in dynamics, between 1990 and 2013. In the Research Institute for the Quality of Life we used to measure the poverty, using the normative method, which is based on consumption. We calculated two consumer baskets: the consumer basket related to the decent minimum standard of living and the subsistence level consumer basket. We monitored the different types of families in urban and rural areas: active persons and the pensioners. We used equivalence scales in order to calculate the expenditure per household member. The consumer basket is a tool to measure the wealth of poverty of the people from urban and rural areas. Many households have resources below the minimum requirement for a decent living standard as well as below the minimum subsistence standard established by the normative method.