A Psychometric Approach to Living Wage Evaluation

Living wage values are normally calculated using the cost-of-living for a shopping basket, but they can also be seen as a test score threshold for meeting the cost-of-living. Extant research already demonstrates a critical but indeterminate wage range in functions linking (i) wage value to (ii) wage efficiency. This article outlines a protocol for inducting a more precise living wage price-point within that range, that delivers the most efficient marginal return beyond largely inefficient legal Minimum wages. The protocol was pilot tested with a recently archived dataset from a national study of wages and job satisfaction in two waves straddling the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. We find the added precision from applying the protocol (if it had been used to set the living wage at the time), would have made a Just Noticeable Difference (JND) on the pass rate (helped more people to be job-satisfied rather than -dissatisfied).

To read the article in full, click this link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08863687251355658

Work education and educational developments around sustainable livelihoods for sustainable career development and well-being

This is the latest publication from GLOW members:

Work education and educational developments around sustainable livelihoods for sustainable career development and well-being (sagepub.com)

In a nutshell, the article outlines collaborative offering opportunities for sustainable livelihoods in a work education cloud collaboration, Project SLiC (Sustainable Livelihoods Collaboration). GLOW researchers joined forces across nation-states in the Global South/North to share cloud resources, focused on teaching a postgraduate course, Sustainable Livelihoods.

From Precarious Jobs to Sustainable Livelihoods

After a brief introduction to sustainable livelihoods via the subject’s history, this chapter illustrates how a humanitarian Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) based around Sustainable Livelihoods would embrace the following: (1) living wages and fair trade; (2) livelihoods across the vast and frequently ‘illegal’ informal sector; (3) inclusive social enterprises; (4) interfaces with digital automation and Basic Income; (5) multi-faceted gift economies; and (6) shifts to livelihoods that help to protect ecosystems, including flora and fauna on and in land and sea. Synthesizing (1) through (6), the chapter concludes by calling on the UN to make Sustainable Livelihoods a global development goal in the next round of goals post-2030.