How much does it cost for a worker and their family to live a basic but decent life in Pakistan? This paper explores this question using the concept of a living wage. The paper provides consolidated and updated living wage estimates for two rural regions and one urban region of Pakistan. The paper then examines the existing policy framework on returns to labour in general and minimum wages in particular and demonstrates its shortcomings in ensuring decent wages for workers.

This report describes and uses the recently developed Ank- er Methodology® to obtain sub-national living income and living wage estimates. Using Brazil as a pilot country, the methodology calculates living incomes and living wages for Brazilian state capital cities, surrounding metropolitan areas, and mesoregions in the rest of each state.

This paper explains how a gender perspective is embedded into the Anker Methodology for estimating a living wage. This is important for transparency and for ensuring that users of Anker Methodology living wage and living income estimates and other interested parties understand the approach.