Marlene Kim

The Working Poor: Lousy Jobs or Lazy Workers?

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 poverty by working year-round, many are unable to do so, due to disability, age, or poor who could potentially escape poverty by working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year.

The Working Poor and Welfare Recipiency: Participation, Evidence, and Policy Directions

Current welfare debates assume that the poor are taking unfair advantage of the governments largess by shunning work for welfare benefits. Yet many studies indicate that many of those who qualify for welfare benefits fail to receive assistance. This study adds to this growing body of research by finding that a substantial number of the working poor do not receive the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Food Stamp benefits for which they qualify. Thus, it does not appear that the working poor (nor the general population of the poor) are taking advantage of the welfare system. In addition, we examine the argument that the working poor are poor because they are somewhat unusual-that they are either very young or old, do not work many hours, drop out of high school, or are in unusual family arrangements. We find that the working poor do not share these characteristics to the extent previously claimed. Many of the working poor are in married-couple families, most are in their prime working years, most have at least a high school education, and the majority work many hours. We conclude that rather than being poor because of their own bad choices or behavior, the working poor are destitute because of the particular jobs they hold, which tend to be in low-paid service occupations and industries.

Has the Race Penalty for Black Women Disappeared in the United States

This paper finds that black women earn 7 percent less than similarly skilled white women because of their race. Even within the same occupational category, black women earn 3 percent less than similarly qualified white women. Black women receive lower pay primarily due to occupational segregation and because they are rewarded with lower earnings than white women for equivalent levels of education and other human capital characteristics.

Race and Gender Differences in the Earnings of Black Workers

In addition to facing earnings penalties because of their race and additional penalties because of their gender, black women appear to suffer a small but additional penalty because of the intersection of their race and gender. Black women have larger gender than race penalties. Although black men have greater racial penalties than do black women, black women experience larger earnings losses because in addition to racial penalties they face gender and race–gender interaction penalties.

Poor Women Survey Poor Women: Feminist Perspectives in Survey Research

This essay examines how applying feminist principles in scientific inquiry changes both the process and the results of research. Overall, I find that including feminist perspectives improves research. Involving a womens community in the research process and allowing poor women to interview poor women may reduce interviewer bias, improve response rates and facilitate trust in answering questions that are often quite sensitive. Including poor women in the interviewing process also enables these women to learn about scientific inquiry and to participate in the research process.

The Working Poor and Welfare Recipiency

Current welfare debates assume that the poor are taking unfair advantage of the largess of the government by shunning work for welfare benefits. Yet many studies have shown that many of those who qualify for welfare benefits fail to receive assistance. This study adds to this growing body of research by examining the extent to which the working poor who qualify for AFDC, Food Stamps, and Medicaid receive these benefits. We find that a substantial number of the working poor do not receive the benefits for which they qualify. In addition, those who qualify for welfare benefits are not out of the ordinary: most are in married couple families, are in their prime working years, have at least high school educations, and work many hours. The jobs they hold, which tend to be in low-paid service occupations and industries, seem to deposit them into their precarious position of belonging to the working poor.

Policies to End the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Women continue to earn less than men in the United States. This article surveys the debate about why this occurs and synthesizes the policy remedies. Unionizing women, comparable worth, pay secrecy legislation, affirmative action, stronger non-discrimination legislation, and family-friendly policies can improve the gender wage gap. But doing so means that instead of attempting to pass federal legislation, advocates should target states to pass legislation and undertake pro-active remedies that can improve women’s pay. JEL Classification: J7, J31, J38

Employers' Estimates of Market Wages: Implications for Wage Discrimination in the U.S

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 study of government wage-setting in the State of California. Gender biases can appear because numerous decisions are involved in each step of the process, and these decisions are often influenced by the gendered social and political environment, including the different levels of political organization of male and female employees.

The Color of Wealth in Boston

The widening wealth gap in the United States is a worrisome sign that millions of families nationwide do not have enough in assets to offer better opportunities for future generations. Wealth allows families to make investments in homes, in education, and in business creation. On the basis of data collected using the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) survey, we report that, when analyzed by race, wealth accumulation is vastly unequal. By means of the NASCC survey, researchers have collected, for the first time, detailed data on assets and debts among subpopulations, according to race, ethnicity, and country of origin — granular detail ordinarily unavailable in public datasets. In this analysis we focus on estimates for U.S. born blacks, Caribbean blacks, Cape Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans in the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Our analysis shows that with respect to types and size of assets and debt held, the data collected on white households and nonwhite households exhibit large differences. The result is that the net worth of whites as compared with nonwhites is staggeringly divergent.

URPE at Fifty: Reflections on a Half Century of Activism, Community, Debate (and a Few Crazy Moments)

Nearly a dozen Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) members, including founders and activists (past and present), review URPE’s history and legacy, including its political activism, hilarious past, and moving moments. Born in the turbulent 1960s, URPE changed scholars’ lives by providing a platform and community to discuss Left economic work, meet lifelong collaborators and friends, and receive much-needed encouragement and support in a hostile profession. It has broadened, altered, and improved scholarship and the economics profession.