How Much Is A Living Wage?

Activists are hopeful that Maryland will be the first to create a statewide living wage, especially now that influential Montgomery County is expected to pass a $10.50 wage for service contractors this month. In spite of the county's relatively high median household income of more than $75,000, a fifth of its public school students are poor enough to qualify for subsidized meals. An average two-bedroom apartment rents for $1,000 a month in Montgomery County, and so is affordable to a minimum-wage-earning couple only if they work a combined 100 hours a week. Says Phil Andrews, the living-wage bill's champion on the county council: "You can't get at the issue of poverty without addressing wages."

Patricia Alston, who works at a Baltimore catering company, would agree. Seven years after that city's living wage was enacted, she has had her first beach vacation and is poised to become a homeowner. "The living wage contributed a great deal to my ability to get the house," she says. Like Jerome Gibbons, the Los Angeles airport worker, Alston has seen her job transformed from a dead end to a vehicle of hope. For all the costs and uncertainties of the living wage, that may be the strongest argument in its favor. --With reporting by Alice Jackson Baughn/New Orleans and Leslie Berestein/Los Angeles