The Healthy Food Basket for Romania. National Results of a Comparative Research Carried out within the European Reference Budgets Network (2014-2015)

Abstract

The present paper aims to present and discuss the national results for Romania of the comparative research on healthy food baskets, carried out within the European Reference Budgets Network (2014-2015), a project financed by the European Commission at the initiative of the European Parliament. While food baskets have been for long computed in Romania, they have no longer served as policy tools since 2004. Acknowledging the crucial importance of modelling reference budgets for decisions over the minimum wage, social benefits and subsidies for public services, this study embraces a methodology designed by Goedeme, Storms and van den Bosch (2015), in order to construct an updated reference budget for nutritious food and sports activities in 2015 Romania. Among its main conclusions, our study reveals that the values of means-tested social assistance benefits fall far below the monetary value of the healthy food basket. Moreover, dual-earner families employed for the minimum wage and raising two children can hardly afford the daily costs of a balanced nutrition that also fulfils the social and cultural functions of food.