Labor Unions and American Poverty

Authored by journals.sagepub.com and submitted by smurfyjenkins

American poverty research largely neglects labor unions. The authors use individual-level panel data, incorporate both household union membership and state-level union density, and analyze both working poverty and working-aged poverty (among households led by 18- to 64-year-olds). They estimate three-way fixed effects (person, year, and state) and fixed-effects individual slopes models on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), 1976–2015. They exploit the higher quality income data in the Cross-National Equivalent File—an extension of the PSID—to measure relative (<50% of median in current year) and anchored (<50% of median in 1976) poverty. Both union membership and state union density have statistically and substantively significant negative relationships with relative and anchored working and working-aged poverty. Household union membership and state union density significantly negatively interact, augmenting the poverty-reducing effects of each. Higher state union density spills over to reduce poverty among non-union households, and there is no evidence that higher state union density worsens poverty for non-union households or undermines employment.

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Comprehensive_Idea_5 on June 8th, 2021 at 05:06 UTC »

I’m a proud union member. There’s no way my company would pay electricians and all other trades $55/hour with a secure pension, without collective bargaining going back to the 1950’s.

thinkingahead on June 8th, 2021 at 01:42 UTC »

Rising tide brings up all ships. Collective bargaining creates a baseline expectation of what employers need to pay and provide in order to be competitive in a labor marketplace. Makes sense .

secondpresident on June 7th, 2021 at 23:35 UTC »

Any way to read the paper without paying $37.50?

EDIT: OP provided a link to read for free: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/bgcp6/