Working poor
Many social scientists argue that the official measurements used do not provide a comprehensive overview of the number of working poor.
One recent study proposed over 100 ways to measure this and came up with a figure that ranged between 2% and 19% of the total United States population.
The main difference using this metric is that a person's poverty status is determined after subtracting taxes, food, clothing, shelter, utilities, childcare and work-related expenses, and including government benefits and people living in the home that do not fit the "family" definition (such as an unmarried couple, or dependent foster children).
The largest ethnicity groups of the working poor are African-American and Hispanics or Latinos, both at 7.9%, with whites at 3.9% and Asian at 2.9%.
[10] This plan did not account for any food consumption outside of the home, and while it was considered nutritious, it was limited in variety and monotonous, thus the temporary designation.
Countries like Denmark and France have been subject to the same economic pressures, but due to their more "inclusive" (or "egalitarian") labor market institutions, such as centralized and solidaristic collective bargaining and strong minimum wage laws, they have experienced less polarization.
The following graph uses data from Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) to show the working poverty rates for a small sample of countries.
The most important insight contained in this graph is that the US has strikingly higher working poverty rates than European countries.
[citation needed] Married and cohabiting partners are less likely to experience poverty than individuals and single parents.
Housing Working poor people who do not have friends or relatives with whom they can live often find themselves unable to rent an apartment of their own.
Although the working poor are employed at least some of the time, they often find it difficult to save enough money for a deposit on a rental property.
As a result, many working poor people end up in living situations that are actually more costly than a month-to-month rental.
For instance, many working poor people, especially those who are in some kind of transitional phase, rent rooms in week-to-week motels.
These motel rooms tend to cost much more than a traditional rental, but they are accessible to the working poor because they do not require a large deposit.
If someone is unable or unwilling to pay for a room in a motel, they might live in their car, in a homeless shelter, or on the street.
Children growing up in families of the working poor are not provided the same educational opportunities as their middle-class counterpart.
In many cases the low income community is filled with schools that are lacking necessities and support needed to form a solid education.
The grades and credits are not attained in many cases, and the lack of guidance in the schools leaves the children of the working poor with no degree.
In many cases, their parents did not continue on into higher education and because of this have a difficult time finding jobs with salaries that can support a family.
The inequality in available education continues the vicious cycle of families entering into the working poor.
Often, childcare costs can exceed a low-wage earners' income, making work, especially in a job with no potential for advancement, an economically illogical activity.
However, these free options are only available during certain hours, which may limit parents' ability to take jobs that require late-night shifts.
For example, Newman (1999) found that fast food workers in New York City cope with the low-status nature of their job by comparing themselves to the unemployed, who they perceive to be even lower-status than themselves.
Cross-national studies like Lohmann (2009) and Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) clearly show that countries with generous welfare states have lower levels of working poverty than countries with less-generous welfare states, even when factors like demography, economic performance, and labor market institutions are taken into account.
Having a generous welfare state does two key things to reduce working poverty: it raises the minimum level of wages that people are willing to accept, and it pulls a large portion of low-wage workers out of poverty by providing them with an array of cash and non-cash government benefits.
Many subsidies have strict income guidelines and are generally for families with children under 13 (the age limit is often extended if the child has a disability).
However, in an academic research, half of the respondents linked aspirations to their tax refunds for financial support, even though they did not ask for specific governmental aid.
[30] In the conclusion of her book, Nickel and Dimed (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich argues that Americans need to pressure employers to improve worker compensation.
If both you and your spouse have an FSA, the family limit is $5,000—but you could get as much as $2,000 in tax savings if your combined contributions reach the maximum.
[31] Therefore, unless the employment opportunity structure is improved, simply increasing the number of marriages among low-income people would be unlikely to lower working poverty rates.
