Reading a new paper on what income a Tunis family needs to live with dignity, I realized there's many methodological problems w/US $15 #LivingWage arguments - which contribute to the WAY too artificially low "15". First, the Tunis paper link (in FR): 1/7
international-alert.org/fr/publication…
international-alert.org/fr/publication…
How does Tunis paper start? 20 pages on methodology, focused primarily on ASKING ordinary ppl in 9 diverse groups what they need & having them debate & discuss. Premise that ordinary ppl have some knowledge of their own material needs would be revolutionary in US methodology 2/7
How do US papers calculate "living wage"? Taking some top examples, like MIT website (funded by companies that pay below $15 btw): little on methodology; also, data on consumer prices comes from OFFICIAL govt source like USDA-, which itself cites very OLD other govt sources 3/7
On food prices, for example, MIT gets from USDA which gets its "thrifty" food-cost plan from a 2006 USDA study which cites a 2001 study that "asked [low-income household people] what foods they consumed in a day". 4/7 fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/…
When I told this to @OuiemCh, she brought up another problem: asking poor people what they eat is not the same as figuring out what they NEED to eat. USDA divides between "thrifty", "low", "moderate" & "liberal" costs, so class division is baked in 5/7 fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/…
Framing your question is important: "Living" wage vs a "dignified" budget; these words make a difference. What you need to "live" ("living" wage) is not what you need to live a "dignified" life, so maybe US researchers need to learn something from Tunisia's dignity revolution 6/7
I believe US social science's monomaniacal obsession w/quantitative methods at the exclusion of sound & innovative qualitative methods can play a role in maintaining the status quo of economic & power relations, rather than merely _diagnosing_ the status quo 7/7
PS - now if we could get some research going on how to get wages in Tunisia & US & across the North/South divide generally to converge upwards instead of diverging (ie more global inequality) as they have been since 1980
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