Union strong: Organized labor indicator of earning power
Tom VanHeuvelen and David Brady
Belonging to a union or living in a U.S. state where organized labor is relatively strong helps lower the likelihood you will fall into poverty, according to our new research.
In a peer-reviewed study, we examined how unionization is correlated with poverty. So we analyzed data on poverty and unionization rates from 1975 through 2015 using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, widely considered to be the gold standard for tracking individuals over time. We used a variety of poverty measures in our analysis.
We found that households in which there was at least one union member had an average poverty rate of 5.9%, compared with 18.9% for nonunion households, based on a relative measure of poverty rather than an absolute measure, by which what it means to be poor is fixed over time.