In Romania, three different measures are used, namely Subsistence Minimum (SM), Decent Minimum of Life (DM), and Minimum determined by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection (MM). Subsistence Minimum, in the Romanian context, is said to refer to ‘absolute’ poverty, to draw the poverty line (but here absolute is not the synonym of destitution). The DM is the equivalent of an average wage; it is used to define ‘relative’ poverty. The MM is a value obtained for the households whose income is below the SM and DM. Taking DM as a standard, SM is defined as 59.9 per cent of the DM; those who get 31.5 per cent of the DM, or 52.6 per cent of the SM, are placed in the category of MM; and these are considered to be suffering from severe poverty.
There are other measures used by scholars for assessing the extent of poverty in these countries. These are the following:
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