Abstract
Low-wage workers have borne the brunt of the changing labor market, including wage stagnation, growing income inequality, and increasingly unstable work environments. Most research on low-wage workers focuses on precarious minimum wage employment; however, some low-wage workers hold jobs earning more than minimum wage with consistent, full-time hours. This study explores strategies parents in these “good” low-wage jobs use to provide for their children, using data from in-depth interviews with hospital workers. We find workers use multiple strategies, which we categorized as scarcity, maintenance, and investment strategies to highlight the distinct types of resources and varying amount of stress associated with them. Finally, we compare the types and number of strategies parents use by hourly wage versus net household income.
During his promotion of the Fair Labor Standards Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described appropriate wages as living wages intended to support a family, specifying that “by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living” (Adams, 2017, p. 615). Despite ongoing advocacy, many Americans are not paid a living wage. Rather, since the 1970s, U.S. workers have experienced persistent wage stagnation and growing income inequality (Kalleberg, 2011; Piketty & Saez, 2014). Historically, a living wage was often defined as a family wage where a wage paid to a man would provide for his family. This concept was built on patriarchal, heteronormative, and racist beliefs. Many families, particularly families of color, could not access this problematic ideal. While always out of reach for many American families, today a living wage by any definition is increasingly unattainable for U.S. families, even those with two employed parents.
Low-wage workers bear the brunt of the effects of the inequality of the contemporary labor market. Many of these workers are parenting, and some are single parents. Extensive research in the U.S. context has explored the experiences of low-wage workers in precarious jobs (e.g., Edin & Lein, 1997; Henly & Lambert, 2014). Research examining minimum wage jobs has demonstrated their inadequacy, preventing parents from providing for their families’ basic needs without additional support from their families or the government (Lopresti & Mumford, 2016; Sabia & Nielsen, 2015). In addition, work on precarious employment shows the effects not only of low pay but also of unpredictable work structures (e.g., irregular hours) on parents’ ability to care for and provide for their children (Henly & Lambert, 2005).
However, less research has been done with full-time working parents in low-wage jobs that are not precarious but rather may be described as “good” jobs: those with consistent full-time hours, access to health insurance, and regular paid time off (Kalleberg, 2011). It is important to understand the experiences of the range of parents experiencing financial hardships, as parental stress results in worse outcomes for children (Metzler et al., 2016; Okechukwu et al., 2012). The current study is a preliminary exploration of the strategies used by parents with “good,” low-wage jobs to provide for their children in a U.S. context and the stress associated with different types of strategies.
Background
The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (commonly known as “welfare reform”) embodied ongoing sexism and racism and forced many mothers into low-wage work environments (Pearce, 2000). Women, especially women of color, are disproportionately represented among the low-wage workforce (Tung et al., 2015). The children of low-wage workers are likely to experience the problematic ripple effects of low-wage work environments. There are a few pathways through which material hardship may be transmitted through parents to child outcomes. First, financial hardship and a related inability to invest in enriching child activities and experiences may have implications for child development into adulthood (Duncan et al., 2016). Second, financial hardship is stressful for parents (Okechukwu et al., 2012) and experiences of high and/or enduring levels of stress may affect their children (Metzler et al., 2016). Finally, the sheer number of strategies to address hardships by low-wage parents may overtax their cognitive load (Lens et al., 2018), potentially limiting the amount of energy and attention parents can spare for their children. Overall, material hardship due to low wages is a pathway through which both parent and child well-being are negatively affected.
In the face of material hardship and a dwindling social safety net, U.S. parents have used a range of strategies to provide for their children’s basic needs and limit the effect of this material hardship on their children (Edin & Lein, 1997; Heflin et al., 2011). First, many parents, if eligible, use public benefits, although there is evidence that many parents do not access public benefits for which they are eligible (Floyd, 2020). A study of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) found that many parents utilizing CHIP did not experience a significant reduction in material hardships but did have increased access to children’s health care (Saloner, 2013). The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP), on the contrary, has been shown to significantly reduce a range of hardships beyond food insecurity, including hardships related to housing, utilities, and medical needs (Shaefer & Gutierrez, 2013). A nationally representative study of parents in families within 185% of the federal poverty line showed that 85% of parents used public benefits, although they may not be sufficient to relieve material hardships (Wu & Eamon, 2010).
A second important strategic approach to relieving hardship is utilizing social networks. Kin networks aid low-wage workers in food preparation and child care (Agrawal et al., 2018; Katras et al., 2015; Presser, 2003). Perceived instrumental support can improve child well-being by reducing material hardship and increasing the likelihood that parents use safe parenting approaches (Kang, 2013; Radey, 2018). However, some research shows that, like other singular approaches to addressing material hardship such as public benefits or wage increases, social support alone is not sufficient to alleviate hardships or improve child outcomes resulting from poverty (Radey, 2018). In addition, the strength of social support is documented as inversely related to family need, with research consistently showing that the most vulnerable parents have the smallest, most negative networks (Attree, 2005; Henly et al., 2005; Radey, 2018).
Third, parents use a range of financial strategies to save money or increase their income. Emergency saving, even in small amounts, can mitigate hardship (Gjertson, 2016). Parents also rely on the Earned Income Tax Credit, which can also be categorized as a public benefit, and other tax savings to build savings or pay expenses (Tucker et al., 2014). Another strategy is to ignore debts or pay them off in installments (Tach et al., 2018). Others use strategies that risk loss like pawnshops and payday loans (Karger, 2007). Some parents increase income by working overtime or second jobs (Edin & Lein, 1997).
Most research describing parental strategies among lower-wage workers is focused on precarious workers and/or includes parents who are unemployed. Less is known about the experiences of workers in “good” jobs who work consistent full-time hours in jobs with benefits while still earning a low income. Some evidence shows that this group also faces material hardships, such as food and housing insecurity, similar to those in precarious work and/or with little to no income (Neckerman et al., 2016). However, these workers may use different strategies to relieve their hardships, particularly as they may be priced out of some or all public benefits (Romich et al., 2013).
In the context of growing income inequality coupled with a shrinking social safety net, researchers need more information about the hardships and needs of low-income workers in full-time jobs to inform policy and practice with this vulnerable group. The current study addresses the following research question: What strategies do parents working in good low-wage jobs with regular, full-time schedules and benefits use to provide for their families?
Method
Study Design and Sample
To answer this research question, qualitative data collected via in-depth interviews with parents from a larger study of low-wage workers were inductively coded and analyzed. Specifically, data were taken from the first wave of the Pittsburgh Wage Study, a longitudinal study with a convergent parallel mixed-methods design that includes both an annual survey of the population and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a subsample of the population. The population included members of a union in an urban hospital that covers service, technical, and clerical workers. The broader study was initiated to document the effects of wage increases resulting from workers’ successful unionization effort. Interview participants were identified through direct recruitment by study staff, snowball sampling, and purposive sampling to balance the sample. All study procedures were approved by the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board.
Interviews were conducted in person by faculty and trained graduate students, at a time and location preferred by the participant. The interview began with a consent process in which the interviewer explained the goals, risks, and benefits of study participation. Interviews covered a range of domains: personal savings and spending, use of public and employer benefits, family and leisure time, personal hardships, health and stress, commitment to work and labor experiences, and community participation. Interviewers used an interview guide to explore these topics, including specific questions for each domain and a set of prompts to help interviewers fully explore each topic. For example, “What do you (sometimes) have to forgo because you can’t afford it? (prompts: essentials, leisure)” and “All of us sometimes have trouble making ends meet at the end of a month. How do you do it? (prompts: frequency, strategies, feelings).” Interviewers were also encouraged to further explore topics beyond the prompts to fully understand participants’ responses as well as to document emerging themes. These strategies were discussed in weekly research team meetings. In addition, all interviews were supplemented with a budget worksheet to record income and expenses, a demographic sheet, and a detailed field note written by the interviewer immediately following each interview. Field notes included a summary of the interviewer’s impressions and chronicled workers’ emotions through the interviews, including when they cried or points they emphasized. Participants were compensated with a US$20 gift card to a local grocery store. Interviews were recorded and lasted approximately 1 hr. All interviews were transcribed verbatim, and names are pseudonyms.
The Pittsburgh Wage Study from which these data are drawn is not specific to parents; any workers in the involved union are eligible. Parents were defined as any participants with a dependent child below the age of 18 living with them at least 50% of the time. All parents were full-time custodial as well as birth parents. Thirteen interview participants reported being parents of minor children in Wave 1 of the broader study and thus were included in this analysis (see Table 1). Nine of the parents in the sample were Black, three White, and one reported not knowing her race because she was adopted. Ten mothers and three fathers were interviewed. Three of the 10 mothers and two of the three fathers were married; the remaining parents were single. Data were collected following the first union-negotiated wage increase. After this raise, most parents earned less than US$15 per hour, although their wages ranged from US$10.91 to US$18.99 per hour. Monthly net household income also fell within a broad range (US$1,140–US$6,600) and for married workers included their partners’ income as well as any income from second jobs. Even for workers who earn similar wages, monthly income varied significantly due to the use of employer benefits, number of overtime hours worked in a given pay period, and household composition. Six parents had one child, six had three children, and one had five children. Parents worked in a range of jobs such as nursing or medical assistants (n = 6), sterilization technicians (n = 2), cardiac monitor technicians (n = 2), an occupational assistant, an anesthesia technician, and a unit secretary. Most (10/13) reported working overtime or a second job. All workers in the sample fulfilled Kalleberg’s (2011) definition of having “good” jobs, including working full-time (36–40 hr per week), having access to benefits (e.g., health care, retirement fund, life/disability insurance) and paid time off, and being unionized.
Description of Participants.
Engaged, but living as married.
Analysis
Coding process
Two members of the research team inductively developed a codebook from initial coding of three interviews and then applied these codes to the remaining interviews using descriptive thematic coding. NVivo was used in the coding process. One interview was used to establish interrater reliability (IRR) (k = .47, IRR = 98.88 to k = 1, IRR = 100, which is considered substantial agreement; Hallgren, 2012; Landis & Koch, 1977). To answer the research question, we focused on identifying strategies used to accomplish caregiving and provide for families’ basic needs. By pulling codes related to strategies, we began to develop a list of strategies. Further analysis involved consulting the original interviews in full. Given that the larger study focused on the effects of wage increases on people’s lives and work, most comments about caring for children were focused on financially providing for children. However, any comments about children or parenting were included in the analysis. A case summary was written for each interview, listing strategies used with supportive quotes. These data were combined in a checklist matrix to summarize strategies used across the sample (Miles et al., 2014).
Categorization of strategies
Through the coding process and triangulating interview data with the detailed field notes, it became clear that some parents were experiencing much more financial strain than others and, relatedly, seemed to use different strategies depending on their level of financial strain. Experiencing financial strain and material hardships are stressors that have documented effects on child outcomes. As such, we analyzed how choices about strategies were related to stress levels described by parents. In other words, we saw in our analyses that some strategies generated—and in turn were generated by—higher levels of stress than others. Furthermore, in the context of research examining the effects of wage increases up to a US$15 minimum wage floor, we were interested in how individuals’ strategy packaging might align with the US$15 minimum wage proposal. By categorizing strategies, we were able to enumerate them and compare them across individuals by wage and income level. Before we present the results by strategy type, we first describe categorization determination.
We used a few indicators from the interviews and field notes to create strategy categories to reflect the data. First, we identified what workers described as essential spending. These included paying all their bills and purchasing food and other basic supplies as foundational to their budget. For example, James (Black father of three, cardiac monitor technician, US$15.25 per hour) described his financial priorities as paying “Rent, car note . . . just housing costs, electric, gas, food.” Julie (White mother of three, operating room aide, US$10.91 per hour) also prioritized basic needs, “So I pay my bills, whatever’s left, diapers and whatever else . . . Probably bills. Food. Diapers. Diapers are a lot.” For parents in the sample, basic needs were a top priority.
Second, we noted that parents who could not afford these basic needs on their full-time salaries described the strategies to fill these needs as stressful. Stress was identified in the analysis by the way that people talked about strategies (e.g., using words associated with stress) and the emotions people exhibited during the interviews identified by triangulating interviews with field notes. For example, two mothers—Tanya (mother of one, monitor technician, US$15.25 per hour) and Vera (Black mother of three, nursing assistant, US$14.45 per hour)—both cried during the interviews when talking about financial strain and public benefits. In fact, Tanya became so upset that the interviewer offered to end the interview (Tanya declined). In addition, both used clear stress-related language when describing some strategies. For example, after describing overdrafting her bank account to avoid having her utilities shut off, Vera stated that the situation left her “stressed to the max,” causing her to cry at home with worry.
It was evident from workers’ comments that parents wanted the pay from their full-time jobs to afford them at least their basic needs, as well as that many of their jobs did not pay enough to cover basic needs. Strategies parents used to address basic needs were often risky because they risked loss either due to narrow eligibility requirements, in the case of public benefits, or due to overstressed and underresourced families in the case of family support. When these forms of support were lost, parents were forced either to face serious hardships like hunger or homelessness or to use even more stressful strategies like payday loans. These stressful strategies worked to address basic needs but risked plunging the family into severe scarcity if they failed. As such, we termed such strategies “scarcity strategies.”
In contrast, some strategies required discretionary time or money and were described without the stress-related words and emotions of “scarcity strategies.” While scarcity strategies addressed basic needs, workers used this next category of strategies to free up extra time or money or invest in the future. For example, Vera reported that her children help with chores, and, because of this, she had some free time. Meanwhile James’s mother watched his children, enabling him to train as an auto mechanic in case he lost his hospital job. In other cases, workers made a tradeoff between money and time, which seemed less accessible to workers whose basic needs were not being met. Both Alyssa (White mother of one, certified occupational therapy assistant, US$18.99 per hour) and Jada (Black mother of three, unit secretary, US$13.44 per hour) took pay cuts to increase the time they had with their children, moving jobs to reduce their commute and improve their schedule, respectively. We termed these “investment strategies” as they focused on preparing for the future and sometimes involved current sacrifice for future payoff.
Finally, some strategies fell between these two extremes. We grouped this last set of strategies into a category characterized by approaches that seemed to reduce costs but which workers did not describe as stressful. In contrast to investment strategies, working parents did not have to contribute their own time or money to implement these strategies. Hence, they fell between strategies that address extreme financial strain due to basic needs being potentially unfulfilled and strategies that are possible due to a worker’s discretionary resources. For example, Kelsey (White mother of one, operating room aide, US$10.50 per hour) explained, “We don’t really drink or go out to eat a whole lot . . . So, I mean they’re not important, but there’s things [we forgo].” This is a good example of how parents talked about this category of strategies. As she noted, “they are not important” and did not use stress-related language, making it distinct from a scarcity strategy. However, there was no contribution of time or money, making it distinct from an investment strategy. Although some of these strategies did address basic needs like child care or housing, they were described as strategies to improve child care or housing rather than the stressful accounts of scarcity strategies where parents seemed more worried about losing these basic resources altogether. We termed these strategies “maintenance strategies.” In the following section, we detail each category of strategies and explore their relationships with individual parents’ hourly wage as well as with their monthly household income.
Results
Scarcity Strategies
Scarcity strategies were used to address basic needs and, due to the level of hardship these strategies addressed, were associated with stress. All but three parents reported using at least one of these scarcity strategies. These strategies encompassed three primary types: using public benefits, foregoing needed items partially or in total, and accessing family members or banks to address basic needs. Public benefits used by these participants included food assistance through Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/food stamps), Section 8 housing, and public medical insurance (Medicaid or CHIP) for their children. Forgone items included medical insurance for the parent, utility bill payments, or skipping meals/eating smaller portions.
Paying partial bills, also known as bill juggling, and using family support were common strategies. Tanya described paying partial bills. “I always have to call and tell them, ‘I’m going to be late with this. Can we please work something out, could I give you this?’” She described her process, stating, I normally have to skip two bills in order to make sure I can put food in my house and make sure we have everything else. And that’s basically what I do. Just try to figure out how I always have to pay that late fee.
She described the stress of asking her family to help when she falls short on utilities, saying, I’ll try to call as many people as possible, like my dad or my brother, my sister, and my mom. It’s happened a lot of times. They can’t necessarily—it’s a cycle, things will get shut off. And then I have to try to get everything back on. It’s awful. It’s awful.
Another stressful strategy was overdrafting accounts or taking out payday loans to cover expenses, which resulted in paying fees or reducing future income. Vera described “living off overdrafts” where she overdrew her account to pay her utilities, resulting in US$35 per day in bank fees. To pay these, she would take a payday loan from the hospital credit union, which she then used to replenish her bank account and stop the bank fees. She described a complex borrowing and payment strategy: I had to overdraft Monday because I had a shut off notice for my electricity. So, I had to overdraft that $300 to pay that, so the electric wouldn’t get shut off. So, $300, and then the $35 every day, it’s now up to $500. So, I had to—I went to the credit union, and got a loan from them, and I’m going to deposit that check into my bank account, so when it comes time for me to get paid, I’ll get a paycheck and it won’t just be taken in bank fees.
She later explained that this process results from her inability to afford all her basic needs, “[my kids are] like, ‘Mom, we’re hungry,’ so you have to make that happen and say, ‘Ok, I’ll figure it out later how to pay my electric bill.’” She concluded by describing the effect of these strategies and coping with these financial stressors saying, “I’m stressed to the max. Absolutely stressed.”
Parents using these strategies felt that they should not be necessary because of their full-time work in hospitals, which they had presumed were “good” jobs. For example, Tanya was concerned that she may lose enough of her Section 8 benefit that she will need to move back in with her mother. She expressed frustration given that she is working, saying, I’ll go to my mother’s house, and I have a job. That’s the problem . . . I used to be a certain bracket years ago. We were okay. Now? It’s where the poor people are . . . a totally different category.
Maintenance Strategies
Maintenance strategies were not associated with stress and required no money or time from the parent. These helped reduce costs but did not involve parents’ ability to meet the basic needs of themselves or their families. All parents in the sample used maintenance strategies. Most reported working to reduce food costs in a variety of ways. Almost everyone avoided going out to eat. Kelsey explained, “We don’t really drink or go out to eat a whole lot . . . So, I mean they’re not important, but there’s things [we forgo].” Others reported purchasing less expensive food at discount grocery stores. A few parents reported methods to reduce housing costs that did not require public assistance. Latoya (Black mother of one, anesthesia technician, US$16.10 per hour) reported participating in a housing co-op, giving her ownership rights for only US$425 per month. Alyssa answered a question about her mortgage stating, “It’s $485. Our mortgage is very low. We bought our house from my in-laws, so, very low.”
Parents used maintenance strategies to reduce child care costs. Quite a few parents used kin or close friends to provide free child care all or some of the time. Latoya reported, “My mom actually watches her for me . . . so, yeah, that saves me a large expense.” Kelsey explained how her fiancé’s mother gives them a cut rate at her daycare: Like, the daycare that he goes to is my fiancé’s mother’s. She actually runs the daycare. So, she helps out tremendously. If he went to a different daycare, it would cost a lot more than it does for us now. So that is a lot of help.
Sheila’s (Black mother of three, nursing assistant, US$14.83 per hour) older children watched her 6-year-old child: “I have my mom and my son’s 15 now so he watches his sister.” James, Sheila, and Latoya all relied on grandmothers or older children watching siblings. When school was out of session, free summer camps provided in the community often provide meals, alleviating both food and child care insecurity.
Some strategies were categorized as maintenance strategies because they were not described as stressful. For example, having lingering student or medical loans was not described as acutely stressful. Unlike urgent costs with immediate consequences like rent or utilities, lingering loans were seen as unlikely to be paid off and thereby participants described minimizing their payments. Describing her school loans, which she had had reduced down to a US$5 monthly payment, Jada explained she called the lender and said, “I can’t afford what you want me to pay and you’re going to always have these things in default. So, can you fix this?” Regarding medical debt, Vera said, I have a lot, but I’m not paying them . . . so, they just bill you, and it stays on there forever because those bills are so high, and of course I can’t pay it at the moment. So, it kind of just lingers with you.
While Vera acknowledged the impact on her credit, these loans did not elicit the acute stress of being unable to pay for both food and her utility bills in the same interview. Not being able to purchase clothes for oneself as a parent was also described without stress. Parents consistently described not purchasing clothes. Darryl (Black father of one, sterilization technician, US$13.48 per hour) did not count clothes as a necessity saying, “I have to buy decent—so you’re on your feet all the time—shoes, but clothing? I haven’t bought clothing.” In sum, maintenance strategies were used by participants across wage and income levels. Overall, they seemed to represent common budgeting strategies and pragmatic parenting tasks of all parents.
Investment Strategies
Investment strategies required some money or time to implement but usually free up money or time for the parent. Some strategies slightly reduced costs, including using a Flexible Savings Account (FSA), a type of pretax savings account for essential purchases like child care and health expenditures, to pay for child care or using coupons. Another cluster in these strategies was preparing for the future, including saving money, buying insurance, and obtaining more education. Alyssa explained how she and her husband have disability insurance for emergencies, saying, “because if one of us had to go without the other’s income, at this point, we wouldn’t be able to make everything meet. So, we have that in place just to make sure.”
In several cases, these strategies showed situations where parents strategized to sacrifice money for time, such as taking pay cuts to have more child-friendly schedules or a shorter commute. Other parents freed up time by having a consistent schedule. Latoya implied that she chose this job to access this schedule, stating, That’s probably why I took the job in the first place, because . . . when I originally started the job, I was 8:00 to 4:30, and then I bumped up to 7:00 to 3:30, and then now I just started earlier this week 6:30 to 3:00. So, you don’t really find a job to where you’re able to get that shift this early, . . . just being a year in . . . some people have to wait for it.
Sometimes maintaining a consistent schedule was a worthwhile fight when managers arbitrarily decided to make shift changes. Jada accepted her job and arranged school-related transportation based on a 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift and realized there was no way to accomplish child care when her manager wanted her to rotate between this shift and a 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. shift. She was able to defend her consistent schedule using emails from the hiring process to protect her children, stating, “I hate to say this, but I had to just make it very plain because I have small people. It’s one or the other. It is difficult to flip flop between me having everything situated for them.” Angie (Black mother of three, nursing assistant, US$11.66 per hour) reported that working three, 12-hr shifts was ideal for her family when combined with a babysitter, stating, “I love the fact that I can work three days a week and go home and spend the rest of my days with my kids.”
Forfeiting overtime was another way that parents free up time. Kelsey reported that her home responsibilities meant she could not afford to do overtime: [Interviewer: And do you work overtime at all?] I haven’t yet . . . . As much as I would like to give a little bit more, picking up more than a couple of hours I usually don’t because I would prefer to be at home with [child]. Because he’s in daycare in the morning, so when I get home, it’s nice because he’s at home, too. [Interviewer: So, your main reason for not working overtime would be—] The little one, yeah.
Kelsey explained that she and her fiancé worked their schedules out to improve their family time. Malik (Black father of one, sterilization technician, US$15 per hour) accomplished something similar by reducing his overtime, although he was still working 20 hr of overtime a week: What I used to do, is I would stay maybe three, four hours, come in three or four hours early each day. But what I do now, versus doing that way, I’ll try to double out twice a week. That way, it gives me more of my family time. I’m not taking so much away from them.
Taking the opposite tack, Alyssa took on overtime so that her husband could quit his second job to have more family time, explaining, “I have a 2½-year-old, so I would much rather be home with him than working the overtime, but it just helps us have more time together as a whole family.” Alyssa had also recently changed jobs to reduce her commute, reporting that her main reason for leaving her previous job was an 80-min, one-way commute.
Finally, other investment strategies simply involved time, such as splitting housekeeping with children or spouses. Alyssa and her husband could share housework responsibilities in part because of her husband’s limited work hours. She explained, My husband actually does a lot more of that than I do. He works a job that he gets done earlier in the day. He doesn’t work a full eight-hour shift. His job, when you’re done with the job, you leave. You get to go home, which is really nice. So, he has more time at home than I do, so he does more of the cleaning, the cooking.
Sheila reported having her children help with housework, stating that her adolescent children “do laundry and cook and clean.” Overall, investment strategies required some contribution of time or resources and, thereby, were mostly available to individuals with some discretionary resources, enabling them to sacrifice time or money to enact them.
Household Income Compared to Wage
Once we categorized parents’ strategies, we chose to explore how strategy use was related to wage and income. Hourly wage and net household income were collected by self-report. Participants usually determined their net monthly income by considering their last take-home check and multiplying it by two. Parents with spouses or other forms of income estimated these additional contributions. In addition, it should be noted that there may be atypical reductions from gross pay due to the specific features of this workplace. For example, workers could take loans out from the hospital credit union and repay them automatically out of their earnings. In addition, they could charge lunches, items from the gift shop, and pharmacy co-pays to their badge, which was taken out of their pay and further reduced net pay in addition to reductions from benefits and union dues. Vera explained how her US$1,200 gross income check decreased to about US$600 (workers were paid twice monthly; this represented a single check): I have so much coming out of my account. Like, if I get a loan from the credit union, I have that coming out. I have to pay them back, which is $86. I have my 401K, I have my insurance, my dental, my vision. If I eat in the cafeteria, that’s coming out. So I have a lot coming out of that paycheck.
Some parents might have underreported monthly income. Other parents, however, may have lower wages but higher take-home pay because of working overtime. Finally, monthly pay was estimated from biweekly paychecks, which can be inaccurate unless variation across pay periods is taken into account (e.g., some benefits are only deducted monthly, some months have three pay periods). Although not precise, perceived take-home pay is acceptable given we were examining experiences of financial strain.
Graphical representations helped convey variation by financial delineation (see Figure 1). These graphs represented the number of strategies reported by participants in each category. When ordered by wage, few patterns were observed. Tanya who reported the most scarcity strategies and no investment strategies was above the US$15 mark while Darryl, who reported no scarcity strategies, was below it. In addition, the number of total strategies followed no trend.
Number and type of strategies organized by wage and income.
Patterns become clearer when data were sorted by household income. The number of total strategies had somewhat of a downward trend as household income goes up, consistent with people with higher incomes “not living paycheck-to-paycheck” or “not really having any strategy.” All three people using the most scarcity strategies fell below the US$2,000 per month mark, while both using no scarcity strategies had higher household earnings. Although Latoya reported only one scarcity strategy, as did a few participants above the US$2,000 per month mark, she reported the most maintenance strategies and used only one investment strategy. These patterns suggested that household income was related more clearly than hourly wage to the type and number of strategies parents required to provide care and basic needs for their children. Earning US$15 per hour might only be related to a shift in parental caregiving strategies when it results in monthly household income exceeding approximately US$2,000.
Discussion
Much research with low-wage parents focuses on those earning minimum wages in precarious or unstable jobs (e.g., Edin & Lein, 1997; Henly & Lambert, 2014). There is less understanding of how low-wage parents with “good” jobs make ends meet (Kalleberg, 2011). Analyzing interview data from a study of low-wage hospital workers, we found that parents in such “good” jobs used a range of strategies to provide for their children. We categorized these strategies as scarcity, maintenance, or investment strategies, to reflect how central they were to meeting basic needs as well as the level of stress associated with them.
The use of what we termed investment strategies—coupons, savings accounts, insurance, and being able to sacrifice additional money for time with children—by many parents suggests that working jobs with consistent full-time hours and wages above the minimum wage allowed some parents to invest time and/or money to improve their quality of life and prepare for the future. All but one of the parents we interviewed was engaged in at least one of these strategies. However, none of the parents were able to get by with only investment strategies. All also used maintenance strategies and all but three were forced to use scarcity strategies.
Maintenance strategies required no time or money from the parent themselves. These included reducing costs by avoiding expenses that seemed unnecessary, such as going out to eat or purchasing clothes for themselves; reducing necessary costs, such as child care or loan repayment; or ignoring some expenses like medical debt. Although these may be difficult to distinguish from scarcity strategies, parents described these strategies without stress.
On the contrary, scarcity strategies were stressful for parents. That all but three of the parents we interviewed needed to use scarcity strategies—including using public benefits, forgoing necessities, or relying on others (family or costly lenders) for necessities—despite their “good” jobs is concerning. This demonstrates that the American promise of a full-time job as sufficient to make ends meet is unfulfilled. Parents in our study lost money by incurring fees associated with bill juggling and payday loans and lost sleep worrying about losing benefits. As our participants clearly expressed, financial hardship is stressful for parents and the literature suggests the stress of these hardships and strategies to address them may ultimately worsen child well-being (Lens et al., 2018; Metzler et al., 2016; Okechukwu et al., 2012). Thus, relieving financial stress among parents may have positive effects on child well-being.
These findings should be understood in the context of gender and racial discrimination within the United States. Women and people of color are disproportionately likely to perform low-wage work and women are much more likely than men to do service work (Tung et al., 2015). Indeed, racial job segregation in the Pittsburgh is documented to be significant (Howell et al., 2019). These patterns are born out even in this small sample where 10 of the 13 parents in our sample are mothers, seven of these 10 are single mothers, and five of these single mothers are Black. In contrast, White women and men of any race in our sample were more likely to be married. And, as illustrated by Figure 1, it is the single mothers who have the lowest household income and utilize the most scarcity strategies.
Still, parents we interviewed seemed to have some advantages compared with other lower-wage workers. They were earning more and working less precarious schedules than samples taken from the retail or food service industries (e.g., Henly & Lambert, 2005). Although we cannot make any comparisons to these samples based on strategy use, we might posit that these better jobs and wages allowed parents in our sample to use investment strategies, which tended to increase as wages and household income increased. It is important to note that these higher wages were achieved only through bargaining wins achieved by unionization and are not typical for U.S. hospital workers (Mehaut et al., 2010). This also resulted in scheduling policies that reduced precarity for this sample and facilitated a workplace climate where they could demand a more child-friendly schedule without fear of retribution. As such, these findings demonstrate benefits not only of relatively “good” low-wage jobs but also of a unionized workplace.
Implications for Practice, Policy, and Research
The findings of this study have implications for social work practice, policy, and research. They suggest that even workers in “good” jobs who earn less than a living wage for their family size require significantly more policy intervention than raising wage floors to US$15 per hour, which remains below a living wage for families that include children. For example, a living wage for a single parent with one child is US$23.59 in the city where this study occurred (Nadeau & Glasmeier, 2018). Given this context, this study suggests three potential steps to better understand and advocate for families like those in this sample. First, additional research is needed to confirm these preliminary findings and explore other industries that provide “good” low-wage jobs. Larger samples will enable a more thorough examination of racialized and gendered patterns identified preliminarily by this study and found in similar work. Certainly, these findings support social work’s long-standing concern with gendered and racialized poverty and its effects on child and family well-being, as well as our continued advocacy in this area.
Second, social workers concerned about income inequality would do well to include these workers in their advocacy as well as to consider the implications of the broad range of public and private strategies used by parents to make ends meet. Such a holistic view is consistent with a person-in-environment approach and may provide fertile ground for expanded advocacy across fields within social work. For example, social workers might consider bridging efforts to build multipronged advocacy approaches sensitive to the connections across wage advocacy, public benefits eligibility, affordable housing and child care, and universal health care. This type of holistic view may be needed to truly support parents who are using a range of strategies when so many barriers exist to meeting their basic needs.
Finally, these findings suggest that securing a minimum household income may help families shift from scarcity to investment. Therefore, social workers should continue to research the effects of raising wages while also advocating means to raise wages, such as unionization, and supporting policy efforts to provide universal and targeted family supports to ensure that families’ needs are met, particularly those of single mothers who face additional challenges.
There are a number of limitations to this project. First, this is a small sample and should be considered preliminary data as an initial step in understanding the experiences of low-wage parents in relatively good jobs. Second, this study worked from a limited definition of caregiving or parenting that focused primarily on meeting basic needs and providing a basic quality of life. This was because the broader study is focused on making ends meet rather than parenting or caregiving. Future work should obtain more detail about the relationships between these strategies, qualities of low-wage work, and a broader definition of caregiving, such as time spent and activities accomplished with children or quality of the parent–child relationship. Third, the wage/income data are based on self-report. This is particularly limiting in the area of measures of household net income, which may be under- or overreported in some cases.
Although this study is based on preliminary data with a small sample, it gives a window into the experiences of an underresearched group: parents earning relatively low incomes in “good” jobs. In some ways, their experiences show advantage compared with those of workers in more precarious jobs with fewer benefits, lower pay, and inconsistent schedules (e.g., Edin & Lein, 1997; Henly & Lambert, 2014). This is especially clear in the use of investment strategies. However, the common use of scarcity strategies suggests that some experiences of these working parents may be similar to those in more precarious, lower-wage jobs who are also forced to engage in scarcity strategies (Neckerman et al., 2016). Social workers may be particularly concerned about the frequency of scarcity strategies in this sample. Because even those in our study with higher household income used scarcity strategies, we conclude that increased wages may not be sufficient to move parents from scarcity to investment (Lopresti & Mumford, 2016; Sabia & Nielsen, 2015). Thus, continued policy advocacy and political involvement is needed.
Footnotes
Disposition editor: Sondra J. Fogel
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported in part by grants from University of Pittsburgh Social Science Research Initiative and the Heinz Endowments.
