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Sustainable Livelihoods

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Wage and Well-being

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Abstract

Between 2012 and 2019, ‘jobs’ went from panacea for poverty to instrument of ill-being for most workers globally. In part the shift was due to unsustainable wages. Today, many traditional jobs are in decline, digital platforms on the rise, and the concept of one person-one job is more exception than rule. A ‘lie flat’ movement in China, and ‘great resignation’ in the US, suggest mass questioning of any need to shackle oneself to a precarious grinding, poorly paid/demeaning ‘job’ that will consume lives and leave people bereft of resources to thrive. Decent work is a step towards a more inspiring, expansive and inclusive goal - Sustainable Livelihoods. Decent wages have a role to play. They can brighten not only individual but also social, inter-generational, and community wellbeing. Decent wages can contribute to these colours of wellbeing. This chapter introduces the metaphor of a Wage-Wellbeing Spectrum, on which crossing wage thresholds are transformational.

On one occasion while in Switzerland early on in my career, I developed pneumonia, and my college at Cambridge…arranged to have me flown back to the UK for treatment. Without their money I might not have survived to do all the thinking that I’ve managed since then. Cash can set individuals free, just as poverty can certainly trap them and limit their potential, to their own detriment and that of the human race…

Our planet and the human race face multiple challenges. These challenges are global and serious – climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans. Such pressing issues will require us all to collaborate, all of us, with a shared vision and cooperative endeavour to ensure that humanity can survive. We will need to… refocus and change some of our fundamental assumptions about what we mean by wealth… by mine and yours. Source: S. Hawking (2020, July 29, p. 2).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    MDG1 did include targets of halving the proportion of people whose income was less than US$1.25 a day and achieving decent work for all.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Livelihoods/School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stuart C. Carr

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Carr, S.C. (2023). Sustainable Livelihoods. In: Wage and Well-being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19301-9_3

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