Are the working poor lazy?

Challenge, May-June, 1998 by Marlene Kim

There is a long tradition in America that the poor are victims of their own laziness, a tradition resurrected in recent years. The author shows how wrong advocates of this point of view are.

Most Americans believe that if one works hard, one should not be poor. Yet the working poor constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of the impoverished population, and their growth is expected to continue. According to the official government definition of poverty, which compares family income to a minimum standard of living, the working poor number nine million. This number doubles, however, when measures of poverty are used that more closely reflect what most Americans think is necessary to live on.

Debate about the cause of poverty is also substantial. Some, like Bradley Schiller (1994) and Charles Murray (1997), argue that the working poor are poor because they work too few hours: If they worked full-time and year-round, which means at least 35 hours a week and 50 weeks a year, they would not be poor. The poor are poor, according to this view, because they simply do not work hard enough.

Others, however, argue that poverty among the working poor is due to causes beyond workers' control: to jobs that fail to provide full-year or full-time work or to pay adequate wages. Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood (1991), for example, claim that even if the working poor worked more hours, they would still be poor.

The outcome of this debate is important for policy formulation. If the working poor are poor because they are lazy; as Schiller and Murray contend, we need not worry about them, since they are able to escape poverty readily enough when they are willing to work more hours. However, if they are poor because of forces beyond their control - an insufficient number of jobs that entail steady hours, for example - government policies that provide jobs or income supports could be critical. Clearly; it is reasonable to expect the working poor to do all they can, including working more hours, to rise out of poverty. But it seems unreasonable, if not cruel, for us, as a society; to fail to remedy such poverty if they remain poor because of forces beyond their control.

Lazy Workers or Lousy Jobs?

The study to examine this debate used data from the March 1994 Current Population Survey; a widely used U.S. Bureau of the Census data set collected annually by sampling about 57,000 U.S. households. The working poor were defined as adults (at least 18 years old) who worked at any time during the previous year (1993) and were poor. Poverty was assessed by using the government's official poverty threshold, which measures whether family income is adequate for a given family size. But because many scholars argue that this official threshold is too low (some claiming that poverty should be counted up to 200 percent of this threshold), this study also examined those who were within 125 percent and 150 percent of the poverty level. In order to facilitate the discussion in the text, however, results are often presented using only one of these measures. When this occurs, the measure used is that below 125 percent of the poverty level.

Poverty Rates and the Working Poor

                                          Those below the following
                                         percent of the poverty line

                                            150%   125%   100%

Adults who were working poor                 12%     9%     7%
Poverty rates of adults who worked           18%    14%    10%
Poverty rates of adults who did not work     43%    35%    26%

Source: March 1994 Current Population Survey, Bureau of the Census.

In 1993, 9 percent of adults were members of the working poor, when the threshold used was below 125 percent of the official poverty level. When those below 150 percent of this threshold were included, the proportion of adults who were among the working poor rose to 12 percent (see Table 1).

At first, it seemed as though there was much truth to Murray and Schiller's argument: Working did reduce the likelihood of being poor. Of all adults who worked, 14 percent were below 125 percent of the poverty level as compared to a poverty rate of 35 percent for adults who did not work at all. In addition, the more hours people worked, the less likely they were to be poor. Of those who worked full-time (35 hours or more a week), 9 percent were within 125 percent of the poverty level (6 percent were below the poverty level and an additional 3 percent were between 100 percent and 125 percent of the poverty level). This compared to a poverty rate of 32 percent for those who worked 10 or fewer hours per week. Of those who worked year-round (50 or more weeks a year), 6 percent were below 125 percent of the poverty level. This rose to 32 percent among those who worked 13 or fewer weeks (see Table 2).

Table 2

Distribution of Working Poor Across Poverty Thresholds by Hours and
Weeks Worked

                      Percentage of working poor within
                   the following ranges of the poverty threshold

                   -100%     100%-124%    125%-149%    150 %

Hours worked each week

10 or fewer          24%         8%          8%          61%
11-19                23          3           5           68
20-34                15          5           5           75
35                    6          3           3           89

Weeks worked

13 or fewer          24%         8%          8%          60%
14-26                22          5           3           69
27-39                20          6           5           69
40-48                13          5           6           77
49                    4          2           3           91

Source: March 1994 Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of the
Census.

Note: Numbers across rows may not sum to 100% because of rounding.