Prior to the drafting of the UDHR, the ILO and the League of Nations had been sites for conflicts between the standard of living, which was viewed as an 'American obsession' with materialism and individual consumption, and a European focus on a 'manner of life', characterised by non-market concerns with taste, quality and preference. Between 1929 and 1931, the ILO had done extensive work on determining an adequate standard of living, sponsored by the department store magnate Edward Filene and the Ford Corporation, which wanted to pay workers in its European plants wages equivalent to those paid in Detroit to secure what one Ford manager called 'the maximum efficiency of the worker'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 192