Working poor 1997

In 1997, 35.6 million persons, 13.3 percent of the population, lived at or below the official poverty level. Although the Nation’s poor were primarily children and adults who were not in the labor force, 21.0 percent, or 7.5 million persons were classified as “working poor.” This level was about the same as in 1996. The working poor, as defined for this analysis, are individuals who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force (working or looking for work), but whose income fell below the official poverty threshold. The poverty rate--the ratio of the working poor to all persons in the labor force for at least 27 weeks--was 5.7 percent, little changed from 1996. (See table A.) A majority of the working poor (58.1 percent) usually worked full time (35 hours or more a week), although full-time work substantially lowers a person’s probability of being poor. Among persons in the labor force for 27 weeks or more, the poverty rate for those usually employed full time was 4.0 percent compared with 11.9 percent for usual part-time workers. Only 6.8 percent of the working poor actively searched for a job for more than 6 months in 1997 but did not find work.
Although employment status is a characteristic of an individual, poverty status is defined in terms of a family unit. Thus, earnings from someone's employment are only one factor in that person's poverty status; the earnings of others in the family and the presence of dependents are also important. For example, working wives were less likely than working husbands to be poor (in aggregate) because working wives were more likely to be in families with a second earner. On average in 1997, about 77 percent of married men worked for 27 weeks or more compared with approximately 60 percent of married women. At the same earnings levels, women who headed families are more likely to be poor than other women, because of either limited earnings from others in the family, or because the presence of children raises the amount of income needed to live outside poverty.