Odhad národní ekvivalenční škály pro hodnocení příjmů, spotřeby a životních podmínek domácností

The assessment of welfare of households based on income, consumption and living conditions using any of the various data sources should always take into account the different household size and demographic structure because of economies of scale realized by household members. The relative income poverty indicator applied in the EU, the at-risk-of-poverty rate, can be highly sensitive to the equivalence scale used to transform household income to an equivalent for individuals. This study applies two directions of well-established approaches, the objective and subjective, to estimate the equivalence scale. The objective methods are based on consumption expenditures available in the national Household Budget Survey, and the subjective methods are based on the assessment of Financial Satisfaction and on Minimum Income Question, both available in EU–Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. The aim is to find an estimate of national equivalence scale appropriate for conditions of Czech Republic. The estimate is based on various data for the year 2020 given the availability of all data sources and possibility of comparison of all mentioned methods, nevertheless where data availability permits, the trend since 2010 is also provided. The national equivalence scale is than compared with the OECD-modified scale applied uniformly for decades across the EU countries. Also, the impact of equivalence scale on income poverty indicators is analyzed. The results of this thesis suggest that estimated weights are lower than the officially applied ones and that the adult weight in the equivalence scale is decreasing over time, while the child weight is relatively stable. Applying the estimated scale affects the income poverty rate and leads to different rates than the official ones. The uniform method for definition of national equivalence scale separately for each European country could be more beneficial for purposes of national social policies while keeping international comparability of resulting indicators.