Working Poor - Measuring Working Poverty

Measuring Working Poverty

Depending on how one defines “work” and “poverty,” a person may or may not be part of the working poor. Different scholars and institutions conceptualize working poverty in different ways, making it difficult, but not impossible, to draw clear comparisons between different studies on working poverty.

There are various ways in which institutions and scholars operationalize the concept of work in their definitions of working poverty. Some define a working person as someone who has worked or looked for work for at least half of the past year. Others restrict their definition of work to current employment, leaving out those who are unemployed and looking for work. Still others will look at work as a family or household characteristic, rather than an individual characteristic. According to these definitions of work, a non-working spouse or child who lives with a working person will be classified as working.

Just as there are many ways to define work, there are many ways to define and measure poverty. Some measures of poverty are absolute, while others are relative. Absolute measures of poverty draw the poverty line at a specific monetary amount, which can vary based on family size. Some absolute measures of poverty only take cash income into account, while others, such as the US's new supplemental measure of poverty, focus on disposable income (income after basic expenses have been accounted for). Relative measures of poverty draw the poverty line at some percentage—typically 60%, 50%, or 40%—of a country's median household income.