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

This book examines the movement for living wages at the local level and what it tells us about urban politics. Oren M. Levin-Waldman studies the role that living wage campaigns may have had in recent years in altering the political landscape in four cities where they have been adopted: Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans. It is the author's belief that the living wage movements are a result of policy failure at the local level. They are the by-product of the failure to adequately address the changes that were occurring, mainly the changing urban economic base and growing income inequality. The author undertakes a scholarly analysis of the issue through the disciplinary lenses of political science while also employing some of the economists' tools. 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 failure of local policymakers to adequately address changes in the urban economic base and growing income inequality. [publisher web site]