Definition
At first glance, the definition of this phenomenon appears to be simple: the working poor are persons who hold a job and are affected by poverty. However, both dimensions raise controversial issues. The first issue concerns the well-known problem in defining who is poor, especially in rich countries, which has kept social scientists busy for several decades, without reaching a definitive conclusion.
Poverty can be defined in terms of household income, of other monetary aspects such as consumption, debts, and lack of wealth, of objective living conditions (deprivation), or even in subjective terms. Moreover, poverty lines can be defined in absolute terms, that is, fixed in real value or in relative terms.
Even more problematic is the definition of “working”: most of the existing definitions used in official statistics and academic publications use a threshold in terms of hours per week, or weeks per annum, spent in the labor market, to define those who are working and those...
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Crettaz, E. (2014). Working Poor. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_3269
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