Two notions of poverty are prevalent in the relevant literature, absolute and relative. Relative poverty refers to a situation where a household’s income or resources are significantly different from the mean or median income and resources in the whole economy. Since poverty in a relative sense is little more than income inequality which is usually measured and analyzed separately, researchers and governments have easily discarded measures of relative poverty as insignificant and inaccurate indices of deprivation of essential resources.

On the contrary, the traditional meaning and content of poverty has to do more with the lack of income and resources necessary to cover “needs” defined in a physical and social sense. This definition pertains more to the notion of absolute poverty but its measurement is not as straightforward as it seems at first sight. There exist many different measures within the general absolute poverty approach. In this paper we discuss briefly most of them but we treat in detail the merits and shortcomings of the “detailed standard budget approach” and we apply it in the case of Greece.

More specifically in order to appropriately measure absolute poverty using the “detailed standard budget approach” one has to define precisely a) the set of needs – basic needs for bare subsistence as well as social needs related to the average standard of living and the degree of development of the productive forces – which constitute a minimum acceptable standard of living in a normal and social sense. Here, food and drink, clothing and shelter (including utilities like electricity, water, heat, and telephone) have been considered as the “basic” needs but the list has been expanded in most of recent work – following the standard budget approach – to include all vital elements of a typical consumption basket for a family, namely health, education, transportation expenditures as well as spending on recreational and cultural activities, information and communication, child care, etc. b) the extent of fulfillment of those needs, i.e. the appropriate minimum quantities of the different use values that satisfy the aforementioned needs based on different scenarios like “low cost” or “modest but adequate” c) the prices which will be applied in order to transform the consumption basket of the standard budget into a monetary “poverty threshold” or “poverty line” and d) the relevant income measure (usually disposable monetary income plus in kind benefits from the state and other sources) against which the poverty threshold is compared in order to determine whether a certain person or household could be classified as poor.

The poverty threshold defined in this way is closely related to the value of labor power and especially with its portion which is the sum of the subsistence level along with one part of its “moral and historical element”. The two measures should move together over time with their difference increasing or decreasing depending on the phase of the economic cycle, the direction of social policy, etc. In this way the discussion about poverty and its measurement is connected to the classical political economy tradition workers’ remuneration and the process of the reproduction of labor power.

The research on accommodation needs and expenses is part of a larger research effort to study and account for absolute poverty and the population that lives in it, by overcoming the limits of the existing measuring methods. This larger research aims firstly at the construction of a basket of use-values, as specific as possible, that satisfy as much as possible the basic and “social” needs, hence defining the very volatile but central concept for the study of poverty, that of “need”. And secondly at the calculation of a detailed budget standard in monetary terms, that is, the concrete quantification of the needs.

The unit of reference in the study of the expenses is the household. In order to render the research more specific we have divided our population into 5 groups (1 member/2 member/3 member/4 member/5 member households). These reflect the actual division and incidence in the reference population, id est the inhabitants of the 73 communities of the Metropolitan Athens Area. A further 3 groups, 6 to 8 members households, where examined but are not used in the calculations, due to their marginal incidence on the results.

The household size of reference chosen was the 4 member household, comprised of two adults and two children – one between 6 to 12 years of age and the other in its teens, between 12 and 18. This best fits the criterion of the social need for the simple reproduction of the nation. However, two further reference households (1 and 2 members households) were also used to develop various scenarios.

The basket of accommodation needs and expenses contains the following two main groups of use values: rent and the expenditure to cover the minimum needs associated with housing (water, electricity and heating consumption, sewage, needed use-values related to the inhabitation – commodities for personal and house hygiene, appliances, furniture, etc, expenditure on the “common condominium charges” and various taxes). The first accounts for 31 to 39 per cent of the final costs and the latter 8 to 14 per cent, depending on the household size.

Methodologically, to calculate the “average” rent in the most specific and unbiased way, the following steps were taken:

• The 73 municipalities of Athens that were studied, were divided into three socio-economical groups. The first group is constituted from municipalities where workers and/or other low income strata inhabit as well as where housing prices are low. The second group accounts for municipalities with higher income inhabitants and higher rent accommodation. Finally, the third group includes the areas comprised in the Municipality of Athens, the largest one in the area, with many peculiarities that demand for its special treatment.
• The population of Athens was divided into the eight aforementioned household groups (However only the five of them were significant to the research). Each group was allocated with a span of square meters that, according to specialists, are considered as basic or minimal to satisfy accommodation needs.
• A well know commercial accommodation search engine was used in order to acquire specific monetary values related to the above mentioned elements, using stratified random sampling with household size and socio-economic group as stratification variables.
  

As far as the rest of the monetary values of the needed use values related to housing are concerned, the research took into consideration a number of resources:

• To define the basket and the minimum/basic needs various studies, official sources as well as interviews with a panel of specialists.
• To find the actual monetary value, official studies were used, combined with utility bills compilation and field work (queries to specific services and interviews).
  

It is important to underline the contribution of the research in defining and measuring basic use values that are consumed by a family while occupying a house/apartment. The reference unit used is the 4 member household occupying an accommodation of 85m² (+-10m²). Furthermore, the average lifespan of all durable goods in the reference household is 25 to 30 years. However, various use values do need to be replaced much more often than this average based on hygiene standards and on new trends and technological progress.

Those use-values were divided into three categories:

• Consumables with high rate of replacement
• Standard use values of small monetary importance (high frequency of replacement)
• Standard use values of high monetary importance (small/smaller frequency of replacement).
  

In turn these were divided into four subgroups, according to the use values related to the basic rooms in a house/apartment: the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room and the bedroom.

For the calculation of the monetary values the research used big firms where a big part of the consumer population buys the needed products.

In conclusion, this research opens new perspectives both in terms of the method and of the content, by introducing new ways in defining and measuring needs and their monetary value and more specifically accommodation needs and monetary value.

Each of the three main sections of the paper corresponds to one of the needs. The qualitative aspects in the definition of the need are examined first; the degree of satisfaction of the need follows in terms of use values; finally, those use values are priced, so that a monetary index is constructed at the end of the day. This monetary index, as well as the basket of use values, can be considered as part of a broader approach of absolute poverty. It can also be considered as part of the value of the working power.

To define the need is the hardest part and an interdisciplinary task. In this quest, the paper follows the work and the results of the research already made by several institutions, either academic or other. It is reaffirmed that many issues related to what is needed are not settled and do not share common agreement. After all, the difficulty and the subjectivity of the matter have pushed researchers towards bypassing the definition of those needs, when they want to approach either absolute poverty, or related notions.

Nevertheless, the main focus of the paper is, by proceeding to the second step, the approach of the use values that satisfy a need, to show that objective approach can be applied, through abstraction. All the available information was taken into consideration. When needed, interviews were made with people related to the production, circulation or consumption of the related use values. Thought experiments and statistical processes finalized the picture given here.

The last part proved less difficult. Pricing the use values determined in the second step is not straightforward due to product differentiation and competition. Yet, it is possible to construct the index using the prices of big supermarkets. Offers were omitted due to their temporary nature. The guideline was to accept the lowest price that could be largely found with the minimum of effort. In the case that several use values with different prices could satisfy the need, thought experiments and statistical tools were called upon to settle the issue.

It is more than evident that one such paper could not claim to be complete and exhausting; rather it should be seen as opening the floor for discussion on the issue of the social needs in general, and nutrition, clothing and footwear, and transportation in particular. In a capitalist society that sacrifices the human needs in the quest for profit, such a discussion is certainly well-timed, especially in the frames of a crisis that has come to stay, as far as the working class is concerned.