November 03, 2004 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Poverty rate of families with one member in the labor force

The poverty rate for all families with only one member in the labor force was 12.5 percent in 2002.

[Chart data—TXT]

For families with one member in the labor force for 27 weeks or more, married-couple families had a lower incidence of poverty (8.1 percent) than did either families maintained by single women (21.5 percent) or families maintained by men with no spouse present (11.8 percent). This was true regardless of which member of the married-couple family was in the labor force.

The poverty threshold for families reflects both the total family income and the number of family members. The more workers a family has, the higher its income is likely to be and, therefore, the less likely the family is to be living below the poverty line. For example, only 0.8 percent of families with three or more members in the labor force for 27 weeks or more and 2.0 percent of families with two such labor force participants were among the working poor in 2002.

These data were collected in the 2003 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey. For more information see A Profile of the Working Poor, 2002, Report 976 (PDF 105K). 

 

Related TED articles:

• Occupation and the working poor in 2002 
• Rate of working poor in 2002