![Working women 04](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Working_women_04.jpg)
The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given
poverty line
The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for t ...
due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain under the poverty threshold.
In the US, the official measurement of the working poor is controversial. 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 US population.
There is also controversy surrounding ways that the working poor can be helped. Arguments range from increasing welfare to the poor on one end of the spectrum to encouraging the poor to achieve greater self-sufficiency on the other end, with most arguing varying degrees of both.
Measurement
Absolute
According to the
US Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemplo ...
, the working poor "are persons who spent at least 27 weeks
n the past yearin the labor force (that is, working or looking for work), but whose incomes fell below the official poverty level."
In other words, if someone spent more than half of the past year in the
labor force
The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic reg ...
without earning more than the official poverty threshold, the US Department of Labor would classify them as "working poor". (Note: The official poverty threshold, which is set by the US Census Bureau, varies depending on the size of a family and the age of the family members.) , the poverty threshold for a family of four people is $25,701 and for a single person $12,784. The official poverty threshold is calculated by using the Consumer Price Index for goods, multiplying the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963 by three, a family's gross income (before tax), and the number of family members.
In 2017, there were 6.9 million individuals defined as working poor.
Because there has been, and still is, debate on how accurate using this metric is, the US Census Bureau began publishing a Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011. 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). Using the SPM, the poverty rate overall increases, particularly the rate of the working poor. In 2018, the official rate was 5.1% vs the SPM's measure of 7.2%.
Relative
In Europe and other non-US, high-income countries, poverty and working poverty are defined in relative terms. A relative measure of poverty is based on a country's income distribution rather than an absolute amount of money.
Eurostat
Eurostat ('European Statistical Office'; DG ESTAT) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission located in the Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide statis ...
, the statistical office of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, classifies a household as poor if its income is less than 60 percent of the country's median household income. According to Eurostat, a relative measure of poverty is appropriate because "minimal acceptable standards usually differ between societies according to their general level of prosperity: someone regarded as poor in a rich developed country might be regarded as rich in a poor developing country."
According to the latest data the UK's working poor rate is 10%, with the median income being £507 per week in 2018.
A profile of the working poor in the US
According to a 2017 report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 4.5% of all people working or looking for work for at least 27 weeks in the previous year had incomes below the poverty level. 10.9% of those were employed part-time, and 2.9% were employed full-time. The occupations that have the highest poverty rate are agricultural jobs, such as farming, service sector jobs, such as fast food or retail, and the construction industry, at 9.7%, 9.0% and 7.1% respectively. 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%. Women are far more likely than men to be working and in poverty, 10% vs 5.6%. While the majority of the working poor have a high school diploma or less, 5% have some college education, 3.2% have an associate degree, and 1.5% have a bachelor's degree or higher. Families with children are four times as likely as a single person to live in poverty, with families headed by single women making up 16% of all working poor families.
Prevalence and trends
In 2018, according to the US Census Bureau's official definition of poverty, 38.1 million US citizens were below the poverty line (11.8% of the population). However this number includes children under 18 years of age, elders over 65, and people with disabilities who cannot work. The poverty rate of people between the ages of 18 to 64 was 10.7%, or 21.1 million people. Of these, nearly half, 5.1%, were working at least part-time.
Using the US Census Bureau's definition of poverty, the working poverty rate seems to have remained relatively stable since 1978.
There is quite a bit of controversy around this measurement, namely how the dollar amounts that make up the poverty threshold are calculated. In 1961, the Department of Agriculture came out with an "economy food plan" to be used as a temporarily during an emergency or when a family is in need. 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. The US government took this number and—because the average family at the time spent one-third of their income on food—multiplied it by three. This has remained the standard way to set the poverty thresholds. The food plan has not changed, it has only been adjusted for inflation. One argument is that this is no longer an accurate way to measure poverty because the average lifestyle has changed dramatically since the 1960s
US compared to Europe
Other high-income countries have also experienced declining manufacturing sectors over the past four decades, but most of them have not experienced as much labor market polarization as the United States. Labor market polarization has been the most severe in
liberal market economies like the US, Britain, and Australia. 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.
Cross-national studies have found that European countries' working poverty rates are much lower than the US's. Most of this difference can be explained by the fact that European countries' welfare states are more generous than the US's.
The relationship between generous welfare states and low rates of working poverty is elaborated upon in the "
Risk factors
In epidemiology, a risk factor or determinant is a variable associated with an increased risk of disease or infection.
Due to a lack of harmonization across disciplines, determinant, in its more widely accepted scientific meaning, is often use ...
" and "
Anti-poverty policies" sections.
The following graph uses data from Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) to show the working poverty rates for a small sample of countries. Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) accessed this data through the
Luxembourg Income Study
LIS Cross-National Data Center, formerly known as the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), is a non-profit organization registered in Luxembourg which produces a cross-national database of micro-economic income data for social science research. The proj ...
. This graph measures household, rather than person-level, poverty rates. A household is coded as "poor" if its income is less than 50% of its country's median income. This is a relative, rather than absolute, measure of poverty. A household is classified as "working" if at least one member of the household was employed at the time of the survey. The most important insight contained in this graph is that the US has strikingly higher working poverty rates than European countries.
Risk factors
Race
Minorities in the US are
disproportionately affected by poverty. Blacks and Hispanics are twice as likely to be part of the working poor than Whites. In 2017, the rate for Blacks and Hispanics was 7.9%, and 3.9% for Whites, 2.9% for Asians.
Education
Higher levels of education generally leads to lower levels of poverty. However, higher education is not a guarantee of escaping poverty. 5.0% of the working poor have some college experience, 3.2% have an associate degree, and 1.5% have a bachelor's degree or higher.
Using the Supplemental Poverty Report and looking at everyone in poverty, not just those working, these percentages actually rise to 14.9% with a high school diploma, 9.7% with some college, and 6.2% with a bachelor's degree of higher.
Blacks and Hispanics have higher rates of poverty than Whites and Asians at every education level. Student loan debt in the USA can also contribute to poverty due to capitalized interest if the borrower does not earn enough wages keep up with the loan payments.
Families
Married and cohabiting partners are less likely to experience poverty than individuals and single parents. The percentage of married and cohabiting partners living in poverty in 2018 was 7.7% and 13.9% versus 21.9% for individuals. Single mothers are more likely than single fathers to experience poverty, 25% and 15.1% respectively.
Age
Older workers are less likely to be working and poor than their younger counterparts. The age group with the highest rate of poverty at 8.5% is 20 to 24 year olds, and 16 to 19 year olds at 8.4%. As workers age, the rate of poverty decreases to 5.7% for 25 to 34 year olds and 5% for 35 to 44 year olds. Workers ages 45 to 50, 55 to 64 and 65+ had much lower working poor rates, 3.1%, 2.6% and 1.5%, respectively.
Gender
Women of all races are more likely than men to be classified as working poor, especially if they are single mothers. The overall rate for women in 2017 was 5.3%, compared to 3.8% for men. The rate for Black women and Hispanic women was significantly higher than their male counterparts, at 10% and 9.1%, compared to Black men at 5.6% and Hispanic men at 7.0%. The rate for White women was closer to White males, at 4.5% and 3.5%, respectively. Only Asian women had a lower rate of working poverty than Asian males, at 2.5% and 3.2%, respectively.
Transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
persons are more likely than
cisgender
Cisgender (often shortened to cis; sometimes cissexual) is a term used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. The word ''cisgender'' is the antonym of ''transgender''. The prefix ''wiktionary:cis ...
men or women to be classified as working poor. In the United States, transgender people are three times more likely than the average population have a household income between $1 and $9,999, and nearly twice as likely to have a household income between $10,000 and $24,999.
Obstacles to uplift
The working poor face many of the same daily life struggles as the nonworking poor, but they also face some unique obstacles. Some studies, many of them
qualitative, provide detailed insights into the obstacles that hinder workers' ability to find jobs, keep jobs, and make ends meet. Some of the most common struggles faced by the working poor are finding affordable housing, arranging transportation to and from work, buying basic necessities, arranging childcare, having unpredictable work schedules, juggling two or more jobs, and coping with low-status work.
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
motel
A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...
s. 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. This is not a marginal phenomenon; in fact, according to the 2008 US Conference of Mayors, one in five homeless people are currently employed.
Some working poor people are able to access
housing subsidies (such as a
Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher
Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937 (), often called Section 8, as repeatedly amended, authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households in the United States. Fort Lauderdale, Florida Hou ...
) to help cover their housing expenses. However, these housing subsidies are not available to everyone who meets the Section 8 income specifications. In fact, less than 25% of people who qualify for a housing subsidy receive one.
Education
The issue with education starts many times with the working poor from childhood and follows them into their struggle for a substantial income. 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. This follows students as they continue in education. In many cases this hinders the possibility for America's youth to continue on to higher education. The grades and credits just are not attained in many cases, and the lack of guidance in the schools leaves the children of the working poor with no degree. Also, the lack of funds for continuing education causes these children to fall behind. 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. Today a college degree is a requirement for many jobs, and it is the low skill jobs that usually only require a high school degree or
GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
. The
inequality
Inequality may refer to:
Economics
* Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention economy
* Economic inequality, difference in economic well-being between population groups
* ...
in available education continues the vicious cycle of families entering into the working poor.
Transportation
Given the fact that many working poor people do not own a car or cannot afford to drive their car, where they live can significantly limit where they are able to work, and vice versa.
Given the fact that public transportation in many US cities is sparse, expensive, or non-existent, this is a particularly salient obstacle. Some working poor people are able to use their social networks—if they have them—to meet their transportation needs. In a study on low-income single mothers, Edin and Lein found that single mothers who had someone to drive them to and from work were much more likely to be able to support themselves without relying on government aid.
Basic necessities
Like the unemployed poor, the working poor struggle to pay for basic necessities like food, clothing, housing, and transportation. In some cases, however, the working poor's basic expenses can be higher than the unemployed poor's. For instance, the working poor's clothing expenses may be higher than the unemployed poor's because they must purchase specific clothes or uniforms for their jobs.
Also, because the working poor are spending much of their time at work, they may not have the time to prepare their own food. In this case, they may frequently resort to eating
fast food
Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...
, which is less healthful and more expensive than home-prepared food.
Childcare
Working poor parents with young children, especially single parents, face significantly more childcare-related obstacles than other people. 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, some single parents are able to rely on their social networks to provide free or below-market-cost childcare.
There are also some free childcare options provided by the government, such as the
Head Start Program
Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and families. The program's s ...
. However, these free options are only available during certain hours, which may limit parents' ability to take jobs that require late-night shifts. The U.S. "average" seems to suggest that for one toddler, in full-time day care, on weekdays, the cost is approximately $600.00 per month. But, that figure can rise to well over $1000.00 per month in major metro areas, and fall to less than $350 in rural areas. The average cost of center-based daycare in the United States is $11,666 per year ($972 a month), but prices range from $3,582 to $18,773 a year ($300 to $1,564 monthly), according to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.
Work schedules
Many
low-wage job
The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...
s force workers to accept irregular schedules. In fact, some employers will not hire someone unless they have "open availability," which means being available to work any time, any day.
This makes it difficult for workers to arrange for childcare and to take on a second job. In addition, working poor people's working hours can fluctuate wildly from one week to the next, making it difficult for them to budget effectively and save up money.
Multiple jobs
Many low-wage workers have to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. In 1996, 6.2 percent of the workforce held two or more full- or part-time jobs. Most of these people held two part-time jobs or one part-time job and one full-time job, but 4% of men and 2% of women held two full-time jobs at the same time.
This can be physically exhausting and can often lead to short and long-term health problems.
Low-Status Work
Many low-wage service sector jobs require a great deal of customer service work. Although not all customer service jobs are low-wage or low-status,
many of them are. Some argue that the low status nature of some jobs can have negative psychological effects on workers,
but others argue that low status workers come up with coping mechanisms that allow them to maintain a strong sense of self-worth.
One of these coping mechanisms is called
boundary work. Boundary work happens when one group of people valorize their own social position by comparing themselves to another group, who they perceive to be inferior in some way. 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.
Thus, although the low-status nature of working poor people's jobs may have some negative psychological effects, some, but probably not all, of these negative effects can be counteracted through coping mechanisms such as boundary work.
Anti-poverty policies
Scholars, policymakers, and others have come up with a variety of proposals for how to reduce or eliminate working poverty. Most of these proposals are directed toward the United States, but they might also be relevant to other countries. The remainder of the section outlines the pros and cons of some of the most commonly proposed solutions.
Welfare state generosity
Cross-national studies like Lohmann (2009) and Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) clearly show that countries with generous
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitabl ...
s 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 think that increasing the United States' welfare state generosity would lower the working poverty rate. A common critique of this proposal is that a generous welfare state would not work because it would stagnate the economy, raise unemployment, and degrade people's work ethic.
However, , most European countries have a lower
unemployment rate
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refere ...
than the US. Furthermore, although Western European economies' growth rates can be lower than the US's from time to time, their growth rates tend to be more stable, whereas the US's tends to fluctuate relatively severely. Individual states offer financial assistance for child care, but the aid varies widely. Most assistance is administered through the Child Care and Development Block Grants. 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). Many subsidies permit home-based care, but some only accept a day care center, so check the requirements. 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.
Some states distribute funds through social or health departments or agencies (like this one in Washington State). For example, the Children's Cabinet in Nevada can refer families to providers, help them apply for subsidies and can even help families who want to pay a relative for care. North Carolina's Smart Start is a public/private partnership that offers funding for child care. Check the National Women's Law Center for each state's child care assistance policy.
Wages and benefits
In the conclusion of her book, ''
Nickel and Dimed
''Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America'' is a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich. Written from her perspective as an undercover journalist, it sets out to investigate the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on the working poor in t ...
'' (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich argues that Americans need to pressure employers to improve worker compensation.
Generally speaking, this implies a need to strengthen the
labor movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
. Cross-national statistical studies on working poverty suggest that generous welfare states have a larger impact on working poverty than strong labor movements. The labor movements in various countries have accomplished this through political parties of their own (labor parties) or strategic alliances with non-labor parties, for instance, when striving to put a meaningful
minimum wage
A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...
in place. The federal government offers a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) that's administered through workplaces.
If a job offers an FSA (also known as a Dependent Care Account), one can put aside up to $5,000 in pre-tax dollars to pay for child care expenses. 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.
Education and training
Some argue that more
vocational training
Vocational education is education that prepares people to work as a technician or to take up employment in a skilled craft or trade as a tradesperson or artisan. Vocational Education can also be seen as that type of education given to an ind ...
and
active labour market policies
Active labour market policies (ALMPs) are government programmes that intervene in the labour market to help the unemployed find work. Many of these programmes grew out of earlier public works projects, in the United States particularly those imple ...
, especially in growth industries like healthcare and
renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
, is the solution to working poverty. To be sure, wider availability of vocational training could pull some people out of working poverty, but the fact remains that the low-wage service sector is a rapidly growing part of the US economy. Even if more nursing and clean energy jobs were added to the economy, there would still be a huge portion of the workforce in low-wage service sector jobs like retail, food service, and cleaning. Therefore, it seems clear that any significant
reduction in the working poverty rate will have to come from offering higher wages and more benefits to the current, and future, population of service sector workers.
Child support assurance
Given the fact that such a large proportion of working poor households are headed by a single mother, one clear way to reduce working poverty would be to make sure that children's fathers share the cost of child rearing. In cases where the father cannot provide child support, scholars like
Irwin Garfinkel advocate for the implementation of a child support guarantee, whereby the government pays childcare costs if the father cannot. Child support is not always a guarantee if the father or mother does not work. For example, if the parent without custody is not working then the parent with custody does not receive any child support unless the non working parent is employed at their job longer than 90 days, excluding if the non begins to work for its a city or government. Also, the government does not pay for childcare cost if you make more than the cut off range (your gross, per county or state.)
Marriage
Households with two wage-earners have a significantly lower rate of working poverty than households with only one wage-earner. Also, households with two adults, but only one wage-earner, have lower working poverty rates than households with only one adult. Therefore, it seems clear that having two adults in a household, especially if there are children present, is more likely to keep a household out of poverty than having just one adult in a household. Many scholars and policymakers have used this fact to argue that encouraging people to get married and stay married is an effective way to reduce working poverty (and poverty in general). However, this is easier said than done. Research has shown that low-income people marry less often than higher-income people because they have a more difficult time finding a partner who is employed, which is often seen as a prerequisite for marriage.
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.
Ultimately, effective solutions to working poverty are multifaceted. Each of the aforementioned proposals could help reduce working poverty in the United States, but they might have a greater impact if at least a few of them were pursued simultaneously.
See also
*
Precariat
In sociology and economics, the precariat () is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmant ...
*
Income inequality
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
*
Wage slavery
Wage slavery or slave wages refers to a person's dependence on wages (or a salary) for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility.
The term is often us ...
*
Moonlight clan
The Moonlight Clan () is a large group of people (particularly young people) who expend their entire salary before the end of each month.
The term is derived from a lunar cycle. While ''yue guang'' translates directly to "moonlight", it is also a ...
*
Wage
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...
*
Family wage
A family wage is a wage that is sufficient to raise a family. This contrasts with a living wage, which is generally taken to mean a wage sufficient for a single individual to live on, but not necessarily sufficient to also support a family. As a st ...
*
Living wage
A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum, or a solidarity wage, which refers to a minimum wage tracking labor ...
*
Employment discrimination
*
Wage theft
Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law. It can be conducted by employers in various ways, among them failing to pay overtime; violating minimum-wage laws; the misclassificati ...
*
Social inequality
Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It posses and creates gender c ...
*
Maximum wage
A maximum wage, also often called a wage ceiling, is a legal limit on how much income an individual can earn. It is a prescribed limitation which can be used to effect change in an economic structure, but its effects are unrelated to those of minim ...
*
Guaranteed minimum income
*
Entitlement
An entitlement is a provision made in accordance with a legal framework of a society. Typically, entitlements are based on concepts of principle ("rights") which are themselves based in concepts of social equality or enfranchisement.
In psycholo ...
*
Welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specificall ...
*
Wages and salaries
Wages and salaries are the remuneration paid or payable to employees for work performed on behalf of an employer or services provided. Normally, an employer is not permitted to withhold the wages or any part thereof, except as permitted or requir ...
*
Income distribution
In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes ec ...
*
List of countries by average wage
The average wage is a measure of total income after taxes divided by total number of employees employed. In this article, the average wage is adjusted for living expenses "purchasing power parity" (PPP). This is not to be confused with the Disposa ...
*
Employment-to-population ratio
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the employment rate as the employment-to-population ratio. This is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of a country's working age population (statistics are often gi ...
*
List of countries by employment rate
This is a list of countries by employment rate, this being the proportion of employed adults in the working age. The definition of "working age" varies: Many sources, including the OECD, use 15–64 years old, but EUROSTAT uses 20–64 years old, t ...
*
List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita
A country's gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita is the PPP value of all final goods and services produced within an economy in a given year, divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same y ...
Notes and references
{{Authority control
Minimum wage
Labor relations
Poverty
Wages and salaries
Employment
Measurements and definitions of poverty
Welfare economics
Sociological terminology
United States labor law
Injustice
Working class