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Title: Earning a Living Wage: Metro Differences In Opportunity and Inequality for Adult Males with Low Education Levels

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2004

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Abstract: Local and state economic development policymakers and practitioners have traditionally been concerned about promoting job growth. Much less attention, however, has been given to those who actually benefit from job growth or to the quality rather than the quantity of new jobs. Its clear that some localities and their residents benefit more from economic growth than others do. During the current economic expansion of the 1990s, many cities and towns continued to suffer under high unemployment and poverty rates.1 However, some metropolitan areas do better than others do in translating employment growth into economic opportunities for low income individuals. The differential impact and benefit of economic growth may be especially true for workers and job seekers with no more than a high school education.2. This paper will measure the relationship between employment growth and employment opportunities for noncollege-educated males by examining variations across metropolitan areas in the living-wage employment ratio for prime-aged adult males (2555 years old) with at most a high school education (less educated).Living-wage employment is defined here as full-time, year-round employment (35-45 hours a week, at least 40 weeks a year) yielding annual earnings at or above the official poverty level for a family of four. Dividing the number of less-educated adult males employed in living wage jobs by the total number of less-educated adult males results in a ratiothe living-wage employment ratio. Less-educated adult males were chosen because of the plausible view3 that the falling economic status of less-educated men is a primary cause of a number of social problems as well as the decline of many inner-city, low-income communities. The paper focuses on the following questions: Did metro areas with the same economic base have the same living-wage employment ratio for less-educated men? What factors influenced the variation across metropolitan areas in the living-wage employment ratio for less-educated adult males? Were there racial differences in the living-wage employment ratio across and within metropolitan areas? Did some metro areas have higher or lower rates of living-wage employment than would be expected given their economic base? And do such differences provide insight into institutional, policy, or programmatic variations across metro areas?With respect to the last question, in particular, it is important to note that the descriptive analysis presented in this paper cannot provide definitive policy prescriptions, because it cannot address the causal relationships that underlie the findings. However, the statistical patterns do provide useful insights for policymakers, program planners, researchers, and practitioners as they search for promising ways to improve economic opportunity and alleviate poverty among the working poor.The data set for the analysis was derived from the University of Minnesota's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUM) for 1980 and 1990. IPUMS consists of data on individual households and persons drawn from the censuses of 18501990. The data series contains almost all the detail originally recorded by the census. In order to protect confidentiality, no geographic areas smaller than 100,000 are identified. IPUMS was used to create a data sampleof individual non-Hispanic white, African American (black) and Latino males 2555 years old with no more than a high school education living in the 99 largest metro areas in the U.S.

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Authors: Foster-Bey, John; Rubin, Mark; Temkin, Kenneth

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Institution: Urban Institute

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare

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