Award Abstract #0112475
Intrametropolitan Division of Labor and the Public Cost of Working Poverty

NSF Org:	BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Initial Amendment Date:	June 20, 2001
Latest Amendment Date:	July 22, 2003
Award Number:	0112475
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Gregory H. Chu BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
Start Date:	August 1, 2001
Expires:	February 29, 2004 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$99866
Investigator(s):	Jennifer Wolch wolch@usc.edu (Principal Investigator) Juliet Musso (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of Southern California University Park Los Angeles, CA 90089 213/740-7762
NSF Program(s):	GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES
Field Application(s):
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	1352

ABSTRACT

Working poverty - arising when a job fails to bring an employee's income above the poverty line - is a growing phenomenon in southern California and in the United States, but has received little attention by urban researchers. Building on existing research on welfare, labor markets, and urban economic development, and ongoing work on the geography of poverty and fiscal disparities (see previous NSF project #9905866), this study investigates the relationship between the intrametropolitan patterns of economic activity and working poverty, and estimates the fiscal impact on local jurisdictions in the context of southern California. More specifically, the investigators consider the extent to which the gap between a "livable" income and the sub-poverty income of the working poor imposes extra costs on local governments in the form of traditional anti-poverty expenditures as well as additional services such as childcare, transportation, training, job information, and work-related healthcare - costs that may only be partly offset by intergovernmental transfers or expenditures. To empirically test these relationships, the investigators will develop a model of the impact of working poverty on local public finance and the role of the intrametropolitan division of labor on this relationship during the 1980s and 1990s - a period of dramatic changes in fiscal federalism, welfare organization, labor market conditions and immigration. First, they will measure the incidence of working poverty, analyze its demographic characteristics, identify the industries and occupations where it prevails, and estimate its geographical distribution across municipalities in the five-county southern California region. Second, they will calculate the gap between the actual wages of the working poor and a "livable" wage required to avoid poverty for each city. Third, they will estimate the impact of this gap on local antipoverty expenditures, taking into account the role of fiscal disparities, local labor market characteristics, business subsidies, living wage ordinances, proportion of immigrants, and welfare-to-work factors. This last step will make use of multivariate regression analyses.

This study addresses important questions that have not been systematically approached by urban geographers and other scholars of poverty. First, it provides a better understanding of who the working poor are and emphasizes the links between working poverty and the regional economy. Furthermore, it provides a valuable tool for analyzing the social, political and spatial implications of working poverty, including heightened economic and social polarization, continued central city deterioration, and rapid exurbanization. A better understanding of these issues is critical to the development of successful antipoverty policies both at the national and local levels.

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