A Shared Approach to Estimating Living Wages
Background Despite the recognized need for a decent and living wage, lack of a generally accepted definition or methodology for measuring living wage has often been used to justify ignoring living wage in practice. A recent ILO review indicates that this is no longer an appropriate reason to avoid addressing living wage. There is in fact a clear consensus in the world about what a living wage is (R. Anker, Estimating a Living Wage: A Methodological Review, ILO 2011) Moreover, a new methodology for measuring living wage has been developed and is being supported by six sustainability standard systems. This methodology has been used to date to estimate living wages in nine countries for a multi national corporation and in two countries for Fairtrade and Social Accountability International. Fairtrade International, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) GoodWeave, Sustainable Agriculture Network/Rainforest Alliance (SAN/RA) Social Accountability International (SAI) and UTZ Certified are joining hands (see Box 1) and working with us to further refine and test this methodology for using in estimate living wage levels for the areas in which they work. This note briefly describes the methodology. A Shared Approach to Living Wage