The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities

Living wage campaigns are frequently presented as a quest for economic justice by the labor movement. Often missed, however, is that the living wage is very much a political issue at the local level, and that the typical living wage campaign needs to be understood within the context of urban theory. In this in-depth study Oren M. Levin-Waldman explains what factors led to the adoption of living wage laws in four cities: Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans. Analyzing each of these cases through the disciplinary lens of political science, the author shows that the movements were the results of policy failures at the local level. This scholarly approach shows clearly that the successful movements grew out of the failures of local policymakers to adequately address changes in the urban economic base and growing income inequality.