Waldegrave on living wage

Rev Waldegrave defends his living wage calculations:

Second, she shamelessly selects luxury categories out of the Household Economic Survey (HES) database which is used for all New Zealanders, including the very wealthy, to imply the living wage includes international travel, Sky TV and the double counting of mortgage insurance simply because the questions are there. HES data is the record Statistics NZ gathers to show movements in income and expenditure for all New Zealanders. Everyone is asked all categories, but lower income households are hardly likely to be recording owning yachts or regular international travel. People who rent houses don’t record mortgage insurance, just as homeowners don’t fill in the rent columns.

Actually many low income households have Sky TV. The point is Waldegrave could have asked Stats NZ for data that excluded the costs of luxuries, but then that would not have produced such a high number. And he states why:

A living wage, on the other hand, refers to having those necessities, but also having the ability to participate modestly in society. Examples include being able to afford a computer, especially for children in a household, and a modest insurance policy. It could also include a trip to family in Australia or Samoa for an important occasion where savings have been put aside or extended family contribute.

So Waldegrave’s living wage is designed to include overseas travel. Clear.

Waldegrave misses the key issue around the living wage, and doesn’t mention it once, because it is so fatal to his cause. Only around 10% of those who earn the living wage are in the sort of household his calculation is based on.

We see this issue also in the minimum wage. Tyler Cown blogs a recent paper on the US minimum wage:

Only 11.3% of workers who will gain from an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9.50 per hour live in poor households…Of those who will gain, 63.2% are second or third earners living in households with incomes three times the poverty line, well above 50,233, the income of the median household in 2007.

A stunning figure.

I once was earning at (actually below) the minimum wage. That didn’t mean I was poor, or in a poor household. It meant I was young.