A family wage is a wage that is sufficient to raise a family. This contrasts with a living wage, which is generally taken to mean a wage sufficient for a single individual to live on, but not necessarily sufficient to also support a family.
History
United States
The term "family wage jobs" has occasional contemporary use in American political rhetoric and is most associated with Catholic intellectuals, in the Catholic social teaching tradition, such as
Douglas Kmiec and Allan C. Carlson.
Charles Krauthammer has said there should be a two-tiered system where breadwinners have a higher minimum wage.
Israel
A family wage – a basic wage, with a supplement by family size, was adopted by the dominant trade union in the British Mandate of Palestine (now the state of
Israel),
Histadrut, in 1923, and remained policy for a decade, but implementation was limited.
[See The Founding Myths of Israel, Chapter 6 - Democracy and Equality on Trial]
United Kingdom
In the
United Kingdom, a family wage was a demand of male labour unionists at the turn of the 19th century.
[Oxford Dictionary of Sociology]
See also
