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The Labor Markets and Living Wages program examines the causes and consequences of rising wage inequality and declining living standards for low-wage workers. To date, this work has focused largely on conditions in the U.S. economy, but we are also pursuing projects that examine these issues for other countries as well, including South Africa. Our work in this area is strongly engaged in pursuing policy approaches to reverse these long-term trends, and it focuses on both living wage initiatives (raising the quality of employment) and employment-targeted macroeconomic policies (increasing the quantity of employment) as complementary measures. We are similarly engaged in examining other approaches to expand the availability of decent and secure jobs, including programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the U.S.
Living wage researchSince 1994, roughly 120 entities—including municipalities, other government agencies, and some school districts and colleges—have adopted “living wage” ordinances. These ordinances, a direct outgrowth of the living wage movement that has spread throughout the country, set a minimum wage higher than the national or statewide figures so that low-wage workers and their families can meet their basic needs. These measures are a response to the dramatic fall in the national minimum wage over the past 35 years as well as to the increased use of government “outsourcing”—the contracting to the private sector of services traditionally performed by public employees. In other words, the living wage movement recognizes the inadequacy of the current national and statewide minimum wage levels as a basis for low-wage workers to meet the basic needs of their families through their work efforts. PERI's research in this area initially concentrated on estimating the costs and benefits of living wage ordinances in advance of their implementation. Increasingly, however, we are also monitoring the effects of these measures retrospectively, i.e., after they have been implemented as a working policy

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