It’s Not Just How Much You Get Paid
Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. — Deuteronomy 24:15
I’m not really one to quote the bible, but in this case the 2,700(ish) year-old text is backed up by a 2011 academic paper titled The Timing of Pay by Christopher A. Parsons and Edward D. Van Wesep.
The paper doesn’t quite go so far as suggesting pay “each day before sunset”, but it does make an important link between how often workers are paid and their ability to budget.
Managing a monthly budget requires discipline and the foregoing of immediate gratification in favour of long-term goals. People who are more likely to give in to short-term impulses will often have achieved lower qualification levels, because qualifications require us to sacrifice immediate gratification in exchange for a more distant reward. Lower qualification levels in turn often lead to lower paid employment. It’s a kind of viscious cycle whereby those least able to budget are those that are most likely to fall into a low income group.
