Work Is Not Well-Being
Ms. Adanna Chukwuma
WASHINGTON, DC – My first job was in a cybercafé. I was in medical school in Nigeria, my home country, but school was not in session, as our professors were striking for higher pay. So, I secured a full-time position providing customer support to the dozens of people hunched over desktop computers. My compensation would be variable, paid in cash when the business made “enough profit.” It would barely cover my living expenses, and benefits, from health care to sick days, were not included.
I learned a lot from that job. But perhaps the most important lesson was that work does not guarantee well-being.
For decades, development policy and programming have treated work and well-being as synonymous. While the work-centric model of well-being is considered inadequate in some cases – for example, for people living with disabilities – the question of how to become financially secure is typically met with one answer: get a job. And development initiatives have often focused on facilitating this process.
There are good reasons for this. A job can be a source of dignity and purpose. It can provide structure to daily life, connections to the community, and opportunities for personal growth and skills development. Perhaps most important, a job provides an income, which is critical to economic security.
But, as I saw first-hand at that cybercafé, many jobs are too low-paying to provide any semblance of prosperity, and too precarious to provide financial stability. While global unemployment stands at a historic low of 5 per cent, more than two billion workers worldwide remain financially insecure.
In 2021, the World Bank found that 63 per cent of adults in developing economies reported being “very worried” about one or more common financial expenses, and 45 per cent reported that they would not be able to access extra funds to cover a significant unexpected expense within 30 days. Things are not all that much better in high-income countries. In the US, 59 per cent of people do not have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense. The bottom 60 per cent of US households cannot afford a “minimal quality of life.”
This problem is set to worsen. From violent conflict to technological disruption, major shocks are becoming so frequent and severe that no job – even a good one – offers true security. Meanwhile, inflation is eroding purchasing power, particularly for the lowest-income households, in many parts of the world, undermining financial resilience.
Making matters worse, many countries are facing rapid population aging, meaning that fewer working-age adults are supporting more retirees. Traditional employment-centred pension schemes are expected to break down when more than a quarter of the population is beyond working age. That threshold will be crossed globally in 2030.
Policymakers and the development community now confront an urgent choice: either watch the gulf between work and well-being continue to widen, or revise our approach, so that it focuses not on maximising employment, but on delivering universal financial well-being. This means that everyone can reliably cover their living expenses and save enough to weather most shocks without resorting to high-cost borrowing.
Effective interventions would include labour policies that ensure adequate incomes and portable benefits even for gig and informal workers; automatic stabilisers, such as unemployment insurance and child allowances; and accessible, even mandatory, savings programmes. In addition, educational campaigns can improve people’s ability to make good financial decisions.
Some of these interventions are already occurring. Singapore’s Central Provident Fund promotes long-term financial security by helping citizens accumulate savings for a wide range of objectives, including retirement, home ownership, and health care. New Zealand’s KiwiSaver, a voluntary programme focused on retirement savings, has shown that automatic enrollment dramatically increases impact. The European Union’s Child Guarantee ensures that children in need can access key services, easing financial pressure on families.
More such initiatives are in development. In the US, the proposed Portable Benefits for Independent Workers Pilot Programme Act would test models for delivering benefits to gig workers. But if we are to build a world in which every person is secure in their current and future finances, still more must be done.
Critics might argue that decoupling well-being from work would reduce people’s incentive to participate in the labour market. But experience has shown that when people have financial security, they make better employment decisions, invest in education, take entrepreneurial risks, and contribute more productively to the economy. The costs of maintaining the status quo – in the form of lost productivity, higher health-care spending, and emergency crisis responses – dwarf those of investing in universal financial well-being.
I feel fortunate that I no longer have a job that offers no benefits or sufficient income to save. But this should not be a matter of luck. Everyone deserves basic financial well-being, and perhaps more important, we have the means to deliver it.
(Adanna Chukwuma, Senior Director of Global Impact Measurement at Visa, is a fellow of the OpEd Project and Equality Now. Courtesy -www.project-syndicate.org)
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