Escape from Working Poverty: Steps toward Sustainable Livelihood

Abstract

Working poverty affects over half the world's working population, yet we know remarkably little about the role of wages in transitioning toward sustainable livelihood. We develop and test a model whereby as pay approaches a living wage range, pay fairness becomes clearly associated with work-life balance; this in turn links to job satisfaction, which is a four-step process at the psychological level. We further extend this by testing a moderated mediated model, whereby income level is tested as a boundary condition. Using data from N = 873 New Zealand employees, we focus on relatively low-waged employees across three levels of income: up to $20,000, $20-40,000, and $40-60,000, with the last band straddling the New Zealand Living Wage. We find strong support for pay fairness predicting work-life balance and job satisfaction, with work-life balance mediating the relationship toward job satisfaction. In addition, we find direct effects from income to work-life balance, although not job satisfaction. Furthermore, two-way moderation is supported toward work-life balance and job satisfaction, with higher income employees reporting higher outcomes when fairness is high. The index of moderated mediation is also significantly supporting, indicating that work-life balance has a stronger mediation effect as income rises. Thus, as workers emerged from working poverty, pay fairness, and in turn work-life balance, became psychologically more salient for happiness at work, implying that a pathway to Sustainable Development Goal 8 includes at least three psychological steps, in addition to the pecuniary issue of pay: fairness, work-life balance, and job satisfaction.

An Employee’s Living Wage and Their Quality of Work Life: How Important Are Household Size and Household Income?

“…A number also worked in larger firms, including those with more than 5000 employees (9%). These proportions were reasonably representative of the lower-end of the wage spectrum and economy in NZ [24]. J Sustain Res.…”

“…A total of N = 1011 eligible participants were drawn from a nationallyrepresentative, survey panel of lower income workers in NZ, who were paid under NZ$60,000 per annum [24]. By income level, the majority (39.4%) came from the NZ$40,001-60,000 band, closely followed by the NZ$20,001-40,000 band (35.9%), and then the up to NZ$20,000 band (24.7%).…”

“…Nonetheless, case-based evidence to date [21][22][23] has not been persuasive enough to influence most employers to choose to pay the national or regional campaign living wage [24]. In addition, at a community level, households are diverse, which may render "real" or impactful living wage values variable rather than fixed [10].…”

Narrative Medicine Meets Planetary Health: Mindsets Matter in the Anthropocene

“…However, adherence to the latter-with all of its stress and inflammation-buffering components-is determined by income [237,238]. Increasing numbers of Americans are holding down two jobs-reflecting the inability of one job to provide a living wage [239]; the lack of a living wage, often referred to as 'in-work poverty', is an obvious barrier to adherence of the former, spending time outdoors in nature, and the realization of the oft-discussed 'work-life balance' [240,241].…”

I Am a Leader, I Am a Mother, I Can Do This! The Moderated Mediation of Psychological Capital, Work–Family Conflict, and Having Children on Well-Being of Women Leaders

“…The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly incorporated, as a part of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), actions promoting worthy working conditions for a healthy workplace environment in order to ensure the reduction of economic and social inequalities. In this regard, SDGs recognize not only environmental or socio-economic concerns, but also the well-being of human and occupational health [1], considering that work plays a key role in citizens' life [2]. In this respect, at least four of the UN SDGs foster a gender perspective on the working conditions and occupational health, promoting gender equality and encouraging decent work, in the view that it increases economic growth [3].…”