Identifying sustainable pathways out of in-work poverty

摘要在紧缩和低经济增长的时代，低收入工人面临着巨大的挑战，他们的收入足以养活自己和家人，达到社会可以接受的生活水平。为这些工人找到有效和可持续的摆脱在职贫困的途径，对工人、他们的家人和国家都有重大好处。然而，对于雇主来说，面对越来越多的期望，他们将从社会责任的角度来看待员工的工资，而不是纯粹的生产率或市场比较，这可能构成另一个巨大的成本压力，这是在整个组织员工的工资要求相互竞争的大背景下设定的。因此，了解不同的反贫困措施对工人的实际效果，以及这些措施作为雇主参与的长期措施的可持续性，对在职贫困政策辩论至关重要。随着英国最近的数据显示，目前无工作家庭的在职贫困超过了贫困，这场辩论变得越来越紧迫。该项目为来自约克大学的社会科学家团队和来自约克劳动力市场的三名重要雇主提供了一个独特而宝贵的机会，共同致力于一个应用研究项目，该项目将帮助雇主确定目前为减少其组织内的在职贫困而采取的措施的可能有效性和可持续性。项目合作伙伴是约克市议会、约瑟夫·朗特里基金会/约瑟夫·朗特里住房信托基金(JRF/JRHT)和约克圣约翰大学(YSJU)。研究项目和知识交流将侧重于一个特定的地理劳动力市场--约克。然而，这三个雇主目前面临的挑战并不是约克特有的。因此，在这三个项目合作伙伴组织内调查和制定有效和可持续的战略来处理工作中的贫困问题，将与英国各地更多的雇主(和工人)有很大的相关性。为了调查哪些是减少在职贫穷的最有效和最可持续的政策，该项目将开展以下工作：1.对在本组织内采用最低工资政策的影响和与最低工资承诺的可持续性有关的问题进行雇主和工人层面的分析。这项研究不仅将支持共青团、JRF/JRHT和YSJU各自组织采用和可持续地嵌入最低生活工资政策，而且还将对被视为任何反贫困雇主立场的基石的工资政策进行重要评估，这一评估将对英国更多的组织具有潜在价值。将通过设计和收集两项调查，对三个项目伙伴工作人员目前面临的限制和挑战进行评估；第一项是对三个伙伴组织收入低于特定工资率的工人(约500名工人)进行抽样调查。第二项调查是对对第一次调查作出答复的工人(约40名工人)的抽样调查，这些工人被发现处于在职贫困或面临在职贫困的危险之中。这两项调查都将评估雇主目前实施的反贫困政策对工人的实际效果。3.利用关于工资分配、工资增长和一段时间内在职贫困的国家和区域数据进行分析，为讨论哪些是摆脱在职贫困的最有效和最可持续的途径提供框架或背景。这一分析将有助于将项目调查结果推广到约克劳动力市场以外，并将项目合作伙伴驻约克雇员的经验纳入国家背景。

SummaryIn a time of austerity and low economic growth the challenges faced by low-waged workers in earning enough to support themselves and their families to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living are immense. Identifying effective and sustainable pathways out of in-work poverty for these workers holds significant benefit for the workers, their families and the state. However for employers facing increasing expectations to view their employees' wage through a lens of social responsibility rather than purely productivity or market comparison, this can amount to another significant cost pressure, to be set against a general background of competing wage demands throughout the organisation's workforce. Understanding how effective different anti-poverty measures actually are for workers, and how sustainable they are as long-term measures to be engaged with by employers, is therefore crucial to the in-work poverty policy debate. A debate that is increasingly urgent as recent UK figures show in-work poverty to be currently outstripping that of poverty in workless households.This project provides a unique and valuable opportunity for a team of social scientists from the University of York and three important employers from the York labour market to work together on an applied research project that will help employers identify the likely effectiveness and sustainability of current measures being employed to reduce in-work poverty within their organisations. The project partners are the City of York Council (CYC), Joseph Rowntree Foundation/Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRF/JRHT) and York St John University (YSJU). The research project and knowledge exchange will focus on one specific geographical labour market, York. However the challenges currently being faced by these three employers are not York specific. Therefore the investigation and development of effective and sustainable strategies to deal with in-work poverty within these three project partner organisations will have much relevance to many more employers (and workers) across the UK. To investigate which are the most effective and sustainable policies to reduce in-work poverty the project will undertake:1. an employer and worker level analysis of the effects of the adoption of a living wage policy within the organisation and issues relating to the sustainability of the living wage commitment. Research which will not only be supporting CYC, JRF/JRHT and YSJU in their own organisation's adoption and sustainable embedding of the living wage policy but it will also provide an important evaluation of a wage policy considered to be a cornerstone of any anti-poverty employer stance, an evaluation which will have potential value to many more organisations in the UK.2. an assessment of the constraints and challenges currently being faced by workers from the three project partner workforces will be undertaken through the design and collection of two surveys; the first will be a survey of a sample of workers (about 500 workers) earning below a particular wage rate at the three partner organisations. The second will be a survey that follows-up a sample of workers (about 40 workers) who responded to the first survey and were found to be experiencing or at risk of in-work poverty. Both surveys will allow an assessment of how effective current anti-poverty policies engaged with by the employers actually are for the workers. 3. an analysis using national and regional data on wage distributions, wage growth, and in-work poverty over time to provide a framing or background to the discussion of which are the most effective and sustainable pathways out of in-work poverty. This analysis will help to generalise the project findings beyond the York labour market and set the experiences of the project partners' York based employees into a national context.