PAYING the lowest earners less than a living wage, all too common in countries including the UK and US, leaves even full-time workers unable to lift their families out of poverty. The resulting harm goes far beyond unpaid bills.
Poverty separates people from resources such as healthcare and safe housing. Those in poverty experience more wear and tear from stress than the rest of us, and are . Their children are and to have trouble at school. Their newborns are .
Often, the first response is charitable mental health and medical services. But one of the best public health interventions would be a living wage.
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Poverty鈥檚 physical and emotional toll is catalysed by the marginalisation of poor people. means they often live outside the scope of therapeutic, vocational, social, civic and cultural resources.
Research indicates that this experience of 鈥渙utsiderness鈥� hurts because it reduces and function. It also has a physical dimension: brain activity associated with social exclusion has been shown to .
Could raising people鈥檚 incomes improve their health? . looked at the impact of a community-wide income rise when a casino was built on a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. The study compared psychiatric assessments of children before and after this event. When families moved out of poverty, children鈥檚 symptom rates began to decline.
By the fourth year out of poverty, the symptom rates were indistinguishable from children who had never been poor.
Every day, low-wage earners do the work that we need them to do (and often, that we wouldn鈥檛 wish to do ourselves). When we allow them to go home with poverty-level wages, we relegate them to the social margins, risking the physical and of families and communities.
鈥淓very day, low-wage earners do work we need them to do 鈥� often work we would not wish to do鈥�
A living wage, on the other hand, means that people who are upholding their end of the social contract never get left on the outside looking in.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he only way is up鈥�
