The Fair-Wage Revisited

I hypothesize that the wage rate that workers believe they deserve is determined by their attitudes toward conditions in their workplace and their overall perceptions of their economic standing.1 Using data from the General Social Survey (n = 7416) and the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (n = 624800), this study uses traditional binomial probit regression, as well as recursive feature elimination techniques, in order to understand the relationships that impact feelings of deservedness and the conception of fair wages. The results of these tests confirm some conclusions of past researchers, but also add to them. The largest contributing factors to feeling deservedness over one's wages in the United States during the years assessed are feelings of fairness and value in the workplace, along with an understanding of one's financial status that configures themselves in relation to those in their reference set.