Reference budget for a family with a baby

A reference budget defines the minimum amount of income a specific type of family needs to participate fully in the society in which it lives. Reference budgets have been now established for 22 different family types. Some family types include children of different ages. Until now, no reference budget has been developed for a family with a baby. As the arrival of a baby entails a lot of additional expenses, CEBUD is currently developing a reference budget for a family type with a baby.

The reference budget for a family type with a baby is constructed by putting together baskets of goods and services that a family with a baby needs as a minimum. As far as possible, we start from normative standards: existing laws, official guidelines and recommendations are used to determine whether certain quantities of goods and services should be included or not. By pricing the specific goods and services, we create baskets for a family with a baby.

The composition of the reference budget for babies will be presented to focus groups including people on low incomes. In this way, we want to test whether the baby baskets are acceptable and feasible in the context of minimal participation in society for families with babies.