'Most of America's Poor Have Jobs'

I want to highlight this article in today's links:

Most of America's poor have jobs, study finds, EurekAlert!: The majority of the United States' poor aren't sitting on street corners. They're employed at low-paying jobs, struggling to support themselves and a family.

In the past, differing definitions of employment and poverty prevented researchers from agreeing on who and how many constitute the "working poor."

But a new study by sociologists at BYU, Cornell and LSU provides a rigorous new estimate. Their work suggests about 10 percent of working households are poor. Additionally, households led by women, minorities or individuals with low education are more likely to be poor, but employed. ...

BYU professor Scott Sanders says the findings dispel the notion that most impoverished Americans don't work so they can rely on government handouts.

"The toxic idea is if we clump all those people together and treat them as the same people, then we don't solve the real problem that the majority of people in poverty are working, trying to improve their lives, and we treat them all as deadbeats,"...

"It's been the push, that if we can get people working, then they'll get out of poverty," Sanders said. "But we have millions of Americans working, playing by the rules, and they're still trapped in poverty."