WORK DOESN'T ALWAYS EQUAL WELL-BEING

My first job was in a cybercafé. I was in medical school in Nigeria, 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.

- Adanna Chukwuma

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 firsthand 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%, more than 2 billion workers worldwide remain financially insecure.