The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 54 No. 2 1972
Employment at Low Wages
Abstract
'N our society work is invariably prescribed as the path out of poverty. However, for a significant proportion of the poor this remedy falls on deaf ears, since they work but are poor. The working poor earn their poverty! Perhaps this segment of the poor has been neglected precisely because its existence belies our belief that work is the panacea for all social ills.' The focus of this study is the individual full-time wage earner and the forces affecting his/her wage income. In particular, we are interested in evaluating the relative importance of the individual characteristics of workers and the structure of the labor market in which they work. The first section contains a review of the theory of individual wNage dete-rmination in prep)aration for the exposition of the model of wage determination (section II). In section III we p)resent the empirical results of the investigation, and in section IV we evaluate public policy as it has been applied to the poor and the low-wage worker in our society.
- DOI
- 10.2307/1926272
- Volume
- 54
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 121
- Sources
- openalex crossref