Hours Constraints and In-Work Poverty

We develop a new approach to modelling the impact of personal characteristics on the extent of poverty, using propensity score matching methods. This is used to evaluate the contribution of hours constraints to poverty, as revealed in UK and US datasets. The results reveal a significant difference, consistent with the existence of greater labour market flexibility in the US. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the Board of Trustees of the Bulletin of Economic Research, 2005.