FACTORS INFLUENCING THE LIVING WAGE IN EAST MALAYSIA

Abstract

Living wage goes beyond just about affording necessities such as food, clothes, and shelter. It also comprises the ability for people to allow themselves to be involved with society. Many countries all around the world have been implementing the living wage to their people. Nevertheless, in Asian countries, the push to implement the living wage is still low. Thus, this paper aims to identify the factors that influence the living wage for workers who are currently working in East Malaysia. For this study, Anker’s model is adopted to develop the framework. The independent variables for this study are the cost of food, cost of housing, and cost of other essential needs (healthcare, transportation, education, and clothing and footwear) meanwhile the dependent variable for this study is living wage for workers. Furthermore, there are three moderating variables included in the model, which are savings, full-time worker per household, and family size. This paper utilises primary data as the main approach in the data collection, and the data are collected by using an electronic questionnaire survey to the targeted respondent. The targeted respondent for this study is a full-time employee in East Malaysia, and a total of 315 respondents were able to be collected. Analysis of data comprises of two software which is IBM SPSS Statistic version 24 and Smart PLS 3.0. The findings suggested that the cost of food, cost of housing, education, transportation, and clothing and footwear have a significant relationship towards the living wage. Based on the result found from this study, regulators would be able to improve the salary and wages of the employees by looking at the factors that matter the most to determine the appropriate living wage. Also, this paper can help to act as a reference to working people in achieving the minimum standard of living.