This paper investigates the argument that the working poor are poor because they work too few hours. I find that although working additional hours reduces the chance of poverty, most of full-time and year-round, due to the low wages they receive. In addition, of those who could climb out of...

Treatment effects may vary with the observed characteristics of the treated, often with important implications. In the context of experimental data, a growing literature deals with the problem of specifying treatment interaction terms that most effectively capture this variation. Some of the...

We derive the conditions that sign the effects of changing population composition on wage levels and ratios, when labor supply and discrimination preferences vary. The overall effect depends on an aggregate market, a relative market, and a preference distribution effect.

This paper is the first attempt to estimate the determinants of holiday-taking across several countries. To accomplish this a two-stage estimation procedure is employed which enables incongruous income categories to be transformed into a single income variable. It is found that in the mid-1980s...

Treatment effects may vary with the observed characteristics of the treated, often with important implications. In the context of experimental data, a growing literature deals with the problem of specifying treatment interaction terms that most effectively capture this variation. Some results of...

In the U.S., public and private employers often survey each other's wages in order to estimate the prevailing “market wage” for a job. I examine this process to see how it can lead to underpaying women, relying on a 1989 study of government wage-setting in the State of Washington and my own...

We examine the effect of measurement error on estimates of the size of the working poor population. Using a unique data set, which includes both self-reported and employer-reported earnings, we find that inaccurately reported earnings are common. Among those with very low self-reported earnings...

This is a short introduction to the four paper symposium on the working poor in this issue.