Cross-National Comparisons of Poverty and Working-Class Earnings: How the United States Measures Up

Abstract

In a previous Journal of Working-Class Studies article, we found that the earnings of both the American poor and working class fared well compared with the whole world. When compared with only OECD countries, the U.S. absolute poverty rate was in the middle of the pack. This paper updates our 2022 analysis with more recent data, more countries, and a different absolute poverty measure. The new analysis presented here shows that the earnings of the American poor and working-class still fare well when compared with the rest of the world. Compared with a subset of the 30 wealthiest OECD countries, the American working class was still near the top of the rankings while the U.S. absolute poverty rate was in the middle of the pack. Thus, these new calculations update and largely confirm our earlier findings.