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Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low‐Wage Work. Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997. 320 pp.

Labor and community activists have organized around raising wages for low-wage workers, notably through the "Fight for 15" campaign among fast food workers. This study uses skills data together with manager survey data to estimate occupational wages. Quantile regression was used to estimate a skills-based wage. The analysis provides empirical support for a US$15 an hour minimum wage. The results indicate that low-wage workers possess skills that are undervalued in the labor market.

"Welfare mothers are popularly viewed as passively dependent on their checks and averse to work. Reformers across the political spectrum advocate moving these women off the welfare rolls and into the labor force as the solution to their problems. Making Ends Meet offers dramatic evidence toward a different conclusion: In the present labor market, unskilled single mothers who hold jobs are frequently worse off than those on welfare, and neither welfare nor low-wage employment alone will support a family at subsistence levels." "Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein interviewed nearly four hundred welfare and low-income single mothers from cities in four states over a six-year period. They learned the reality of these mothers' struggles to provide for their families: where their money comes from, what they spend it on, how they cope with their children's needs and what hardships they suffer." "Making Ends Meet is a realistic look at a world that many would change yet few understand. If this country's efforts to improve the self-sufficiency of female-headed families are to succeed, reformers must move beyond the myths of welfare dependency and deal with the hard realities of an unrewarding American labor market, the lack of affordable health insurance and child care for single mothers who work, and the true cost of subsistence living."--Jacket

"Welfare mothers are popularly viewed as passively dependent on their checks and averse to work. Reformers across the political spectrum advocate moving these women off the welfare rolls and into the labor force as the solution to their problems. Making Ends Meet offers dramatic evidence toward a different conclusion: In the present labor market, unskilled single mothers who hold jobs are frequently worse off than those on welfare, and neither welfare nor low-wage employment alone will support a family at subsistence levels." "Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein interviewed nearly four hundred welfare and low-income single mothers from cities in four states over a six-year period. They learned the reality of these mothers' struggles to provide for their families: where their money comes from, what they spend it on, how they cope with their children's needs and what hardships they suffer." "Making Ends Meet is a realistic look at a world that many would change yet few understand. If this country's efforts to improve the self-sufficiency of female-headed families are to succeed, reformers must move beyond the myths of welfare dependency and deal with the hard realities of an unrewarding American labor market, the lack of affordable health insurance and child care for single mothers who work, and the true cost of subsistence living."--Jacket

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Intro -- Title Page -- Contents -- Authors' Note -- 1. Girls Step Up -- 2. Shifts to Work Any and All the Time -- 3. Care Work for Cheap -- 4. The Centrality of Motherhood -- 5. The Broken Promise of Childcare -- 6. Moms and Kids on a Cliff -- 7. Keeping Us in Our Place -- 8. Calling Us Up -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index -- About the Authors -- Publishing in the Public Interest -- Copyright.

Contents -- Contributors -- Preface -- Introduction. Identity as a Weapon in the Moral Politics of Work and Poverty - Frank Munger -- Part I: Working Toward a Future: Identity and the Meaning of Work -- Chapter 1. In Exile on Main Street - Carol Stack -- Chapter 2. Lives on the Line: Low-Wage Work in the Teleservice Economy - Ruth Buchanan -- Commentary. Deconstructing Labor Demand in Today's Advanced Economies: Implications for Low-Wage Employment - Saskia Sassen

Abstract.International research findings highlight the important role of institutions in shaping the wage structure of an economy. Evidence from a sample of seven public hospitals in the United Kingdom confirms those findings, suggesting that a more coordinated and centralized system of wage‐setting (including extension of public‐sector conditions to outsourced workers) improves pay for low‐wage cleaners and assistant nurses. Renewal of wage‐setting institutions provides a necessary but insufficient foundation for the elimination of low‐wage work. Employee investment in skill development, career advancement and skill‐based pay require management's commitment to the design of new, higher‐skilled jobs and the strengthening of internal labour markets.

Social work has long been committed to eliminating poverty, which is at the root of many of the social issues and challenges we address. Over 40% of the U.S. workforce makes less than $15/hour, and the accumulating evidence suggests this is not enough to meet basic needs. In this introduction to a special issue about low-wage work, we describe what is known regarding the experiences and well-being of low-wage workers, as well as promising policy and practice ideas to better support working families. We provide an overview of the included articles and conclude with encouragement for social workers to move beyond a narrow focus on poverty and more broadly consider the struggles and well-being of low-wage workers and their families.