In 1994, David Card and Alan Krueger set off something of a firestorm in economics. In a study of employers in the fast food industry, they found that a minimum wage increase in New Jersey did not lead to employment cuts in the state relative to similar restaurants in nearby Pennsylvania. This defied the conventional economic wisdom, which argued that statutory increases in minimum wages would lead firms to cut costs by reducing employment. Since then, numerous economists have come forward, challenging Card and Krueger’s results using other data from New Jersey.
In 1998 and 1999, the Foundation issued an open-ended request for proposals to conduct case studies of low-wage jobs in the United States. The twelve best proposals were funded, yielding rich studies of 25 industries that employ workers at low pay. Yet none of these studies covered work in the retail sector, where 14% of the labor force is employed, many of them at low wages.
As increasing numbers of American men—particularly African-American men—serve time in prison, the issue of their successful reintegration into society after incarceration becomes more pressing. Complete reincorporation into society requires that ex-offenders find and hold a job, but employers are traditionally unwilling to hire former prisoners. With support from the Foundation, Shawn D.
Welfare reform measures of the 1990s prioritized an expedited route into the labor market for welfare dependents, claiming that employment served a valuable social and economic function. Recent analyses of state welfare-to-work programs show that 15 to 40 percent of all welfare recipients who found a job in the mid- to late-1990s were employed in the temporary help industry, raising the question of whether such jobs set workers on a trajectory towards career development and self-sufficiency, or relegate former welfare-dependents to permanent status among the working poor.
Supplemental Award: $1,300, June 2009
Project Completed: May 2012
In 2004, women in the United States earned more than half the academic degrees conferred in every category, whether associate, bachelor, master, doctoral, or professional. More than 58 percent of college attendees in 2009 are female. What social changes explain this growing gender gap in educational attainment? Has the higher education and income of the baby boomers made it easier for their daughters to go to school or has the increase of women in the labor force led young women to invest more heavily in their education?