Anecdotally, I found some of the costs like food and food to be inflated.
When I looked at the methodology, some is based on consumer surveys so it may be more reflective of over-consumption. In other words, it prices in what people want or what they’re used to, not what they need. The counterpoint is that maybe some wealthy countries should be pricing in a higher quality of life, but the “living wage” then becomes a bit of a misnomer.
Anecdotally their numbers are significantly higher for my city than what I actually spend in some categories. I am not frugal by any stretch of the imagination, you would have to be pretty careless and/or irresponsible to hit some of those numbers. On the other hand, the living wage is below the actual minimum wage in some cases.
If you look at US BLS and Federal Reserve studies on such things, they make a distinctions between what people actually spend on ordinary expenses and when people can no longer afford those categories of expenses.
An interesting artifact is that incomes across the 15-40th percentile range in the same city don't save much money but still have enough money to pay for all ordinary expenses. That is a wide range of incomes for people nominally spending their entire income on the same things. What actually seems to happen is that average people spend excess income on upgrading their lifestyle until they hit the 40th percentile, at which point the average person starts saving some of their additional excess income.
Yes, that's what makes it a living wage instead of a poverty wage, let alone a starvation wage.
The larger point I’m making is the “living wage” may be built on an idea that the assumed consumerist norm is ideal.
Like food and shelter?