Comparative Analysis of the Approaches to Living Standards: Ukraine and Poland

Abstract

The aim of the article is to identify the main directions to improve the regulatory framework for ensuring the living standard of Ukraine’s population. The approaches to the assessment of the living standard in Ukraine and Poland are analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages of the methodology for determining the living standard of the population are revealed. It is established that the Polish consumer basket includes four minimum consumption categories, namely: subsistence minimum, social minimum, social protection floor, family income support. In Ukraine, there is one category of consumption norms – the subsistence minimum without actual costs. As a result, the legislatively established normative living standard lags behind the actual needs of various groups of the population. It is substantiated that the minimum consumption categories in Poland guarantee a person the satisfaction of basic needs both at the constitutional and legislative levels. In Ukraine, the normative living standard is at the level of the poverty line and thus results in excluding part of the population from the accepted standard of living in the society. The shortcomings of the Polish legislation include: term of approval of state social guarantees; threshold value of the indexation of monetary incomes of the population; methodology for measuring the differentiation of living standards. The article presents proposals for the realignment of the measurement of the living standards, target group, and coverage of the population in need of social assistance, with selecting determination criteria close to the EU standards.

Keywords

• subsistence minimum
• social minimum
• standard of living
• consumer basket
• basic needs
• household
• population groups