The concept of a ‘living wage’ is not a new one, but it has gained increasing traction across the political spectrum in recent years. Yet while living wages have the potential to make tangible improvements to the living standards of low to middle income households, the economic feasibility and routes to increased living wage coverage remain under-interrogated.

Despite some high profile successes, relatively few workers have secured a higher wage following a successful living wage campaign. Extending this progress across the public and private sectors requires evidence-building, including a robust and objective exploration of living wages at the micro and macro level and the potential fiscal impact of increased coverage. This project, run jointly by IPPR and the Resolution Foundation, aims to do just that and thereby enable a more informed discussion about the costs, benefits and trade-offs involved in further living wage progress.

The starting point for the project is that there are too many people working for too little pay, contributing to the injustice of in-work poverty: challenging this situation and improving the earnings of the lowest paid workers is an a priori good, so long as it is consistent with maintaining high levels of employment. The project therefore aims to provide rigorous analysis of the problem that a living wage is trying to address and offer practical strategies for progressing living wage coverage.

The project will run through summer 2012.  

Click here to read about our living wage roundtable.

Click here to watch academics discussing the living wage on Youtube.

For more information contact Matthew Pennycook
 
 

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