According to Principle 14 of the European Pillar of Social Rights, everyone should have the right to adequate minimum income benefits that ensure a life in dignity. Reference budgets have been proposed to monitor this principle. Reference budgets are priced baskets of goods and services that represent a given living standard. At the moment, no common methodology for constructing reference budgets exists; instead, different methods are used to construct them. This study sought to compare the approaches and results of two Finnish reference budgets: one created by the Centre for Consumer Society Research (CCSR), and the second by the ImPRovE project. The purpose of the article is to respond to a gap in existing literature around how different methods for constructing reference budgets impact their outcomes. The two reference budgets offer a strong basis for comparison because they both sought to capture the same living standard in the same context for similar household types (single woman, single man, heterosexual couple, and heterosexual couple with two children), while using different approaches. The results suggest that the two reference budgets arrive at different estimates of what is needed for social participation. Ultimately, we found that the most significant differences between the budgets were housing and mobility costs for the couple with two children due to differences in information bases, selection criteria, evaluators, and pricing. The study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it is one of the first to explore how different approaches to constructing reference budgets affect their outcomes. The results suggest that clear criteria for constructing reference budgets are needed to monitor Principle 14 of the European Pillar of Social Rights.

根据欧洲社会权利支柱的第 14 条原则，每个人都应该有权获得足够的最低收入福利，以确保有尊严的生活。已经提出了参考预算来监测这一原则。参考预算是代表特定生活水平的一揽子商品和服务定价。目前，不存在构建参考预算的通用方法；相反，使用不同的方法来构建它们。本研究试图比较两种芬兰参考预算的方法和结果：一种由消费者社会研究中心 (CCSR) 创建，另一种由 ImPRovE 项目创建。本文的目的是回应现有文献中关于构建参考预算的不同方法如何影响其结果的空白。这两个参考预算为比较提供了强有力的基础，因为它们都试图在相同的背景下为相似的家庭类型（单身女性、单身男性、异性伴侣和有两个孩子的异性伴侣）捕捉相同的生活水平，同时使用不同的方法. 结果表明，这两个参考预算对社会参与所需的内容做出了不同的估计。最终，我们发现由于信息库、选择标准、评估者和定价的差异，预算之间最显着的差异是有两个孩子的夫妇的住房和流动成本。该研究对文献做出了重大贡献，因为它是最早探索构建参考预算的不同方法如何影响其结果的研究之一。