This report estimates a living income for rural areas of the Central Region in Malawi. It uses the Anker Methodology®, whereby secondary data from high-quality national surveys are combined with primary data collected in new fieldwork to estimate how much income a family needs to afford a decent standard of living. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing, footwear, recreation, communication, and all other needs, including provision for unexpected events. The Anker Methodology® has been used by the Anker Research Institute to estimate inter nationally comparable living wages and living incomes in over 50 countries. Our estimate of a living income for rural Central Region Malawi for February 2025 is MK 420,804 (USD 240) per month (MK 5,049,650 (USD 2,884) per year). This is based on our estimate of living costs for a typical-size reference family for the study location, consisting of two adults and three children.

This report provides updated estimates of family living expenses and living wages for rural Malawi, with a focus on the tea growing area of Southern Malawi. The update for June 2024 takes into account inflation and changes in payroll deductions since the October 2019 living wage update report (Chiwaula, Anker & Anker, 2019).