Budget Standards and Income Adequacy: An Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

This bibliography is concerned with budget standards, that is, the process of identifying and costing household needs and then constructing the budgets in money amounts required to purchase the goods and services which satisfy those needs. It includes works which discuss the concepts involved, describe aspects of their construction and contemplate the ways in which budget standards, once constructed, may be used. The uses include: assessing the adequacy of income support payments; exploring the relationship between household incomes, budgets and living standards; deriving equivalence scales for families of different size and composition; estimating the cost of a child, the cost of working, and the extra costs for families which include a person with disabilities; and determining variations according to location.