EDITOR, The Tribune.
Greetings Editor,
I’m Lesvie Archer, principal investigator behind the living wages study. Public interest in the study's findings is exciting and I'd like to contribute by sharing some short, but interesting facts:
- Living wages differ from minimum wages, but some persons and countries use both terms indiscriminately. While minimum wages operate as a government-mandated wage rate, living wages are voluntarily paid by employers to their employees.
Per Anker, “living wages” is a family concept. Our study estimates the monthly wages needed by a full-time adult worker to care for a family of four (2 adults and 2 children), provided the other adult works part-time.
Our living wage estimate includes the cost of 3 basic meals and two snacks for each day for each family member, rental costs and utilities, additional costs (education, healthcare, transportation, clothing and footwear, recreation and culture, communication, furnishings, equipment, household needs, alcohol), national insurance, monthly union dues, savings (5%), and emergency funds (5%).
Our study focuses on the rental market; investigating homeownership costs would be a new and interesting study.
Our research team collected prices for more than 2000 food items in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. It is common knowledge that prices constantly change; hence, we present our figures as estimates.
Our estimates offer conservative insight into the salary low-income workers need to maintain a basic, but decent standard of living for themselves and their families, when living in New Providence or Grand Bahama.
LESVIE ARCHER
Nassau,
February 23 2022.
Comments
joeblow 2 years, 2 months ago
... instead of putting more pressure on employers or the government wheat about personal responsibility. People who cannot afford children should not have them and people without a job should not rack up bills. This sounds like socialism 2.0 where someone spends the money I work for to help someone else!
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