Measuring living standards with income and expenditures in the Czech Republic: how much does treatment of housing costs matter?

The topic of this thesis is income and expenditures inequality and poverty in the Czech Republic between 2006 and 2011. For this purpose, I used three concepts of income and expenditures. They vary in accounting for housing costs. The inequality and the poor household's group composition differs based on the chosen concept. The first concept accounts for consumption flow from housing derived from market rents paid in similar dwellings. This thesis examines this concept closely because it has been used on the Czech dataset for the first time. Next concept includes the real housing costs and the last concept deducts housing costs completely to compare living standards of households without distorting housing costs. Income and expenditures inequality and poverty are examined based on these concepts. The results show that the share of the poor in the population slightly increased in the monitored period and especially between 2010 and 2011. Inequality remained approximately the same for all income concepts but slightly rose for all concepts of expenditures. This fact proves the necessity of additional measure to income. As regards poverty, the most endangered is a household of lone parent with children, and children generally. Attention is paid to regulated rent tenure type and the deregulation process. I study..