• DOI:10.1177/0886368706297430
• Corpus ID: 153379818

The Modern Living Wage Movement

@article{Muilenburg2007TheML,
  title={The Modern Living Wage Movement},
  author={Kamal Muilenburg and Gangaram Singh},
  journal={Compensation \& Benefits Review},
  year={2007},
  volume={39},
  pages={21 - 28}
}

• Kamal Muilenburg, Gangaram Singh
• Published 1 January 2007
• Economics
• Compensation & Benefits Review

or 12%, of all individuals earn less than $9 per hour and live below the federal poverty level. Millions more are unable to make ends meet, despite earning sometimes 2 to 3 times the federal poverty level. This is not a recent phenomenon. In 1998, the U.S Conference on Mayors declared low-wage jobs as the number-one cause of hunger in American cities. It is often assumed that the federal poverty level is a measure of what it takes to cover the basic costs of living. The California Chamber of Commerce states that the minimum wage should serve as the standard to judge the level of income required to supply the cost of proper living for a single employee. However, the fact is that the federal poverty level has no relationship to the cost of living. Developed in 1963 by the Social Security Administration, the measure was then based on the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture. This food plan was defined as a nutritionally adequate diet for temporary or emergency use when funds were low. At that time, families spent about one third of their income on food, so the poverty level was based on a multiplier of three. The creator of the federal poverty level clearly stated that her calculation was based on “income inadequacy, not of income adequacy.” To understand how inadequate this definition is to the current reality of poverty, in 2002, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the cost of food was only 13% of an average family’s income. The United States has had minimum wage laws for more than 90 years, and the minimum wage