Compares the ability of prime-age, able-bodied workers in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, and the U.K. to keep themselves and their households out of poverty by working. The authors find that although the probability of being poor is smaller in households in which the head works...

Cross-national comparisons of earnings inequality can be misleading when unemployment rates and rate of female labor force participation differ across countries. This is because such comparisons implicitly place zero values on underutilized labor market activity and domestic labor. This paper...