Low-skilled Workers In America:have We Shredded Their'safety Net?

摘要

The plight of US low-skilled workers over the last 25 years is the scope of these two complementary books, Working and Poor and Higher Ground. The former evaluates how low-skilled workers have fared during these years within an ever-shifting landscape of economic, policy, and demographic changes, while Higher Ground documents a mixed-method evaluation of a Milwaukee-based welfare-reform programme. Working and Poor opens with three important themes observed between 1979 and 2004. First, high-skilled labour has seen dramatic wage growth compared to the modest gains seen by low-skilled labour. Second, immigrant labour has changed the racial-ethnic composition of low-skilled workers, and, finally, the structure of the family has changed, with more children being raised in single-parent families. While the editors give a concise explanation of the US policies attempting to encourage the economic 'self-sufficiency' of low-income families, they also provide a humbling reminder that despite these efforts and the extended US economic boom of the 1990s, the proportion of poor and near-poor households remains relatively unchanged over the last 25 years.