Editing Working poor (section)

==Prevalence and trends==
In 2018, according to the US Census Bureau's official definition of poverty, 38.1 million US citizens were below the poverty line (11.8% of the population). However this number includes children under 18 years of age, elders over 65, and people with disabilities who cannot work. The poverty rate of people between the ages of 18 and 64 was 10.7%, or 21.1 million people. Of these, nearly half, 5.1%, were working at least part-time.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.html|title=Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018|website=www.census.gov|language=EN-US|access-date=19 November 2019}}</ref>

Using the US Census Bureau's definition of poverty, the working poverty rate seems to have remained relatively stable since 1978.<ref name="bls2" /> There is some controversy around this measurement, namely how the dollar amounts that make up the poverty threshold are calculated. In 1961, the Department of Agriculture came out with an "economy food plan" to be used as a temporarily during an emergency or when a family is in need.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ssa.gov/history/fisheronpoverty.html|title=Social Security History|website=www.ssa.gov|access-date=19 November 2019}}</ref> This plan did not account for any food consumption outside of the home, and while it was considered nutritious, it was limited in variety and monotonous, thus the temporary designation. The US government took this number and—because the average family at the time spent one-third of their income on food—multiplied it by three. This has remained the standard way to set the poverty thresholds. The food plan has not changed, it has only been adjusted for inflation. One argument is that this is no longer an accurate way to measure poverty because the average lifestyle has changed dramatically since the 1960s.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/16/official-us-poverty-rate-is-based-hopelessly-out-of-date-metric/|title=Perspective: The official U.S. poverty rate is based on a hopelessly out-of-date metric|last1=Fremstad|first1=Shawn|newspaper=Washington Post|language=en|access-date=19 November 2019}}</ref>

===US compared to Europe===
Other high-income countries have also experienced declining manufacturing sectors over the past four decades, but most of them have not experienced as much labor market polarization as the United States.  Labor market polarization has been the most severe in [[Economic liberalism|liberal market economies]] like the US. Countries like Denmark and France have been subject to the same economic pressures, but due to their more "inclusive" (or "egalitarian") labor market institutions, such as centralized and solidaristic collective bargaining and strong minimum wage laws, they have experienced less polarization.<ref name="Kalleberg">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8LHvtgAACAAJ&q=books+good+jobs+bad+jobs+kalleberg|title=Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States|last=Kalleberg|first=Arne|publisher=Russell Sage Foundation|year=2011|isbn=978-0-87154-431-5|location=New York}}</ref>

Cross-national studies have found that European countries' working poverty rates are much lower than the US's.

The following graph uses data from Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) to show the working poverty rates for a small sample of countries.  Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) accessed this data through the [[Luxembourg Income Study]].  This graph measures household, rather than person-level, poverty rates.  A household is coded as "poor" if its income is less than 50% of its country's median income.  This is a relative, rather than absolute, measure of poverty.  A household is classified as "working" if at least one member of the household was employed at the time of the survey.  The most important insight contained in this graph is that the US has strikingly higher working poverty rates than European countries.

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