Working poverty in southern California: towards an operational measure

As a result of welfare-to-work, discussions on working poverty have sprouted among urban scholars and policy makers. Yet, there is little consensus on how to define working poverty, limiting both knowledge of such populations and ability to inform policy. Using 1998–2000 CPS data for southern California, we compare twelve definitions of work and poverty in an attempt to provide a better understanding of who the working poor are and suggest an operational measure of working poverty that is both empirically simple and realistic. Results indicate that working poor families represent a diverse group of people, which varies significantly depending upon the definitions used. However, as expected, we find a dominance of families with young children and fewer adult workers, most of whom are Latino, work in service or laborer occupations, have lower educational attainment and very low unionization rates, and earn hourly wages close to the legal minimum.