Minimum socjalne jako narzędzie pomiaru ubóstwa

Abstract

The author treats a welfare minimum as a category of the social policy, which among others should be used to identify households suffering from unfavourable living conditions as a result of insufficient current incomes and size of possessed material resources, as weil as to evaluate this phenomenon quantitatively. A special attention has been paid to the existing differentiation of incomes and wealth of households in the light of a welfare minimum considered to be a minimum Income and minimum equipment of a household with consumer durables, and to existing divergences between theoretical aspects of using a welfare minimum for appraisal of poverty and practice. The application of a welfare minimum as a tool for measuring poverty in the Polish conditions is supplemented by deliberations focussed on selected Western countries.