As global organizations face mounting pressure to demonstrate fair compensation practices, there is a critical need for transparent, scalable, and internationally comparable living wage benchmarks. This capstone project with Global IQ, a data-as-a-service company specializing in global mobility and compensation data analytics, aims to develop a reproducible living wage data product covering over 1,300 cities across 130 countries. Leveraging proprietary cost-of-living datasets, statistical modeling, and clustering algorithms, our team is building a robust framework to estimate localized living wages and align them with ESG goals and global labor standards. The resulting tool will support policy-makers, HR leaders, and sustainability stakeholders in driving equitable compensation practices worldwide.
Watch the team present this project at 58:22 in the session recording here.
Keywords: living wage, global compensation, cost of living, wage benchmarking, model development, ESG reporting
Faculty Advisor
Gizem Agar, PhD is an expert in data analytics, machine learning, and transformation with a passion for mentoring. With 15+ years of interdisciplinary academic and industry experience, her latest work is in manufacturing, pricing, logistics, and supply chain. She has received the CEO Award and Outstanding Achievement in Analytics awards for her contributions to Caterpillar.
Dr. Agar teaches Principles of Data Mining, Python for Analytics, Supply Chain Optimization, Capstone courses and advises students. She holds a PhD and MSc in Industrial Engineering from University of Oklahoma, and BSc in IE and a BSc in CE from Cankaya University, Turkiye. She was a visiting scholar at the Kuhne Logistics University (Hamburg, Germany) and at the Technical University of Vienna (Vienna, Austria).