“Money's too tight (to mention)”:A review and psychological synthesis of living wage research

Traditional living wage research has been the purview of economists, but recently contributions from the field of work psychology have challenged existing perspectives, providing a different lens through which to consider this issue. By means of a narrative interdisciplinary review of 115 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2000 and 2020, we chart the transitions in the field with attention shifting from macro-economic and econometric lens largely concerned with the costs of living wage policies, to a more person-centric lens focusing on the employee and their family. Synthesizing prior study, we outline five key themes: consequences for individuals, organizations, and societies; changes in operationalization; exploration of different contexts; study of social movements; and the history of the topic. We outline the importance of work psychology in developing the living wage debate through more inclusive definitions, and novel operationalization and measurement, thereby providing fresh insights into how and why living wages can have a positive impact. Critically, we outline the redundancy of simple study of wage rates without understanding the elements that make work decent. We raise key areas for further study, and this topic presents a significant opportunity for psychology to shift focus to impact upstream policy by providing new empirical evidence, and challenges to structural inequalities

Assumption without representation: the unacknowledged abstraction from communities and social goods

We have not clearly acknowledged the abstraction from unpriceable “social goods” (derived from communities) which, different from private and public goods, simply disappear if it is attempted to market them. Separability from markets and economics has not been argued, much less established. Acknowledging communities would reinforce rather than undermine them, and thus facilitate the production of social goods. But it would also help economics by facilitating our understanding of – and response to – financial crises as well as environmental destruction and many social problems, and by reducing the alienation from economics often felt by students and the public

The Work of Families: The Provision of Market and Household labor and the Role of Public Policy

This paper examines the ability of the family to perform both its economic and institutional functions in today's economy. We argue that individual and family choice with respect to paid and unpaid labor is severely limited. This lack of alternatives in work is generated by three social forces that shape the economic landscape: (1) a tradition rooted in patriarchy; (2) the market system; and (3) the social policies of the state. We create a framework within which the work of families can be analyzed over the past two decades. The analysis is based on data from three waves of the PSID: 1972, 1983, and 1992. Three family types—dual-earner, male-earner, and female-earner family structures—are examined for the nature and intensity of the work effort, the change in labor commitment over time, changes in real income and hourly earnings, and the effect of the increasing encroachment of the market on the family's distribution of labor between the two spheres. Finally, the work of families is examined within the context of the social policies of government, including a review of the institutional difficulties of providing family friendly policies in the current social environment.work of families, paid and unpaid work, social capital, family wage, work hours, family policy,