A full-time worker making nine dollars an hour cannot raise a family above the poverty line.  A paper by Sheldon Danziger and David Ratner demonstrates that fewer women survive on less than $9 an hour today than (its adjusted equivalent) in 1979.  The same cannot be said for men: The authors write:

…changes in the labor market over the past thirty-five years, such as labor-saving technological changes, increased globalization, declining unionization, and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, have made it more difficult for young adults to attain the economic stability and self-sufficiency that are important markers of the transition to adulthood.

This is just more evidence of the shrinking of the middle class; solid working class jobs that will allow you to buy a modest home are disappearing. Hat tip to Family Inequality and Karl Bakeman’s blog.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.