From Living Wages to Family Wages?¹

This paper analyzes the rhetoric and policy goals of the living wage movement. While the rhetoric focuses on workers in the context of their families, the wage levels demanded by activists and mandated by laws are almost never adequate to support families with children, especially single-parent families. We contend the problem is a fundamental, conceptual one: focusing only on setting a single hourly wage obscures the diverse needs of poor families. In this context, the needs of the most marginalized families (single-parent families) become invisible. However, a “living wage” is recently being conceived more broadly by activists, in terms of wage and non-wage work supports, and is seen as applying to the working poor more generally. We argue that the current transformation of the idea of a living wage must continue if the movement is to represent all poor workers. We explore implications for the policy agenda of the movement.