What is a "living wage?"

It sounds nice, but laws mandating them have a pernicious effect:

...laws which demand that those companies which contract with government pay workers a ‘living' wage, often defined as substantially above minimum wage. One purpose of these laws is often to make outsourcing of services so expensive that it doesn't pay for government to contract with outside firms who pay market wages. Indeed, a living wage manual produced by labor groups and advocacy organizations in the 1990s to promote campaigns across the country put it simply when it said: "The Living Wage undercuts the incentive to privatize."