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Budget Standards and the Poverty Line
Author(s) -
Saunders Peter
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8462.00092
Subject(s) - standard of living , poverty , economics , basic needs , equivalence (formal languages) , public economics , measuring poverty , scale (ratio) , cost of living , economic growth , geography , linguistics , philosophy , cartography , market economy
This article reports some of the results from a recent study which, among other things, developed and costed low cost budgets for a range of Australian households. A budget standard represents what is needed, in terms of goods, services and activities, to achieve a particular standard of living and what that costs in a particular place and time. A low cost budget standard is one designed to meet basic needs at a frugal level while still allowing social and economic participation consistent with community expectations. The low cost budget standard estimates for households living in Sydney in February 1997 are somewhat higher than the Henderson poverty line, partly a reflection of the high cost of housing in Sydney, but also a consequence of the low cost standard itself being above a poverty standard. In spite of this, the budget standard relativities for different households provide an estimate of the relative needs of Australian households in the 1990s which could replace the current much‐criticised equivalence scale.