page_title: Living wage
section_title: Contemporary thought
hierarchical_section_title: Living wage / Contemporary thought
caption_attribution_description: English: "Waiting for a Living Wage", poster, produced by the Suffrage Atelier and designed by Catherine Courtauld in 1913. The poster depicts a chained working woman who is visited by starvation while she waits for a living wage.
context_page_description: A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum. Needs are defined to include food, housing, and other essential needs such as clothing. The goal of a living wage is to allow a worker to afford a basic but decent standard of living through employment without government subsidies. Due to the flexible nature of the term "needs", there is not one universally accepted measure of what a living wage is and as such it varies by location and household type. A related concept is that of a family wage – one sufficient to not only support oneself, but also to raise a family.
  The living wage differs from the minimum wage in that the latter can fail to meet the requirements for a basic quality of life which leaves the worker to rely on government programs for additional income. Living wages have typically only been adopted in municipalities. In economic terms, the living wage is similar to the minimum wage as it is a price floor for labor. It thus differs from the national minimum wage in that it is not set according to a legal threshold.
context_section_description: Different ideas on a living wage have been advanced by modern campaigns that have pushed for localities to adopt them. Supporters of a living wage have argued that a wage is more than just compensation for labour.  It is a means of securing a living and it leads to public policies that address both the level of the wage and its decency. Contemporary research by Andrea Werner and Ming Lim has analyzed the works of John Ryan, Jerold Waltman and Donald Stabile for their philosophical and ethical insights on a living wage.
  John Ryan argues for a living wage from a rights perspective.  He considers a living wage to be a right that all labourers are entitled to from the 'common bounty of nature'.  He argues that private ownership of resources precludes access to them by others who would need them to maintain themselves.  As such, the obligation to fulfill the right of a living wage rests on the owners and employers of private resources.  His argument goes beyond that a wage should provide mere subsistence but that it should provide humans with the capabilities to 'develop within reasonable limits all [their] faculties, physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual.' A living wage for him is 'the amount of remuneration that is sufficient to maintain decently the laborer'.
  Jerold Waltman, in A Case for the Living Wage, argues for a living wage not based on individual rights but from a communal, or 'civic republicanism', perspective.  He sees the need for citizens to be connected to their community, and thus, sees individual and communal interests as inseparably bound.  Two major problems that are antithetical to civic republicanism are poverty and inequality.  A living wage is meant to address these by providing the material basis that allows individuals a degree of autonomy and prevents disproportionate income and wealth that would inevitably lead to a societal fissure between the rich and poor.  A living wage further allows for political participation by all classes of people which is required to prevent the political interests of the rich from undermining the needs of the poor.  These arguments for a living wage, taken together, can be seen as necessary elements for 'social sustainability and cohesion'.
  Donald Stabile argues for a living wage based on moral economic thought and its related themes of sustainability, capability and externality. Broadly speaking, Stabile indicates that sustainability in the economy may require that people have the means for 'decent accommodation, transport, clothing and personal care'.  He qualifies the statement as he sees individual necessities as contextual and therefore able to change over time, between cultures and under different macroeconomic circumstances.  This suggests that the concept and definition of a living wage cannot be made objective over all places and in all times. Stabile's thoughts on capabilities make direct reference to Amartya Sen's work on capability approach.  The tie-in with a living wage is the idea that income is an important, though not exclusive, means for capabilities.  The enhancement of people's capabilities allows them to better function both in society and as workers. These capabilities are further passed down from parents to children. Finally, Stabile analyses the lack of a living wage as the imposition of negative externalities on others.  These externalities take the form of depleting the stock of workers by 'exploiting and exhausting the workforce'.  This leads to economic inefficiency as businesses end up overproducing their products due to not paying the full cost of labour.
  Other contemporary accounts have taken up the theme of externalities arising due to a lack of living wage.  Muilenburg and Singh see welfare programs, such as housing and school meals, as being a subsidy for employers that allow them to pay low wages.  This subsidy, taking the form of an externality, is of course paid for by society in the form of taxes. This thought is repeated by Grimshaw who argues that employers offset the social costs of maintaining their workforce through tax cr
caption: Waiting for a living wage poster (1913)
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