42 pages • 1 hour read
David K. ShiplerThe Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Money and Its Opposite”
Tax time in poor neighborhoods is January as opposed to April, when people receive their checks from the Internal Revenue Service. Legally employed low-wage workers who file a tax return stand to benefit from the Earned Income Tax refund, “one of those rare anti-poverty programs that appeal to both liberals and conservatives, invoking both the virtue of government help and self-help” (14). The money earned through this program could be banked and saved towards large assets such as a car, but it often has to go towards paying overdue bills and other debts.
However, many poor are cheated out of their Earned Income Credits owing to a lack of awareness about their rights and schemes perpetrated by middlemen. Shipler notes the prevalence of "loan sharks" in poor and working-class neighborhoods: “Poverty is like a bleeding wound. It weakens the defenses. It lowers resistance. It attracts predators” (18). These unauthorized lenders profit by loaning cash-strapped families money and charging weekly interest. The longer the payment is deferred is the more the interest rises, which means that the end fee could total twice the amount borrowed.
When questioned about who is responsible for poverty, the answer varies from person to person. Single mother Ann Brash, who was born middle-class but found herself poor following her divorce, blames her own ignorance about how to handle finances. Conversely, young parents Willie and Sarah Goodell blame their trap of poverty, alcoholism, and violence on their poor role models growing up, in addition to a lack of opportunities in their old New Hampshire milltown.
Shipler concedes that money is a fundamental preoccupation, as the poor are “caught between America’s hedonism and its dictum that the poor are supposed to sacrifice, suffer and certainly not purchase any fun for themselves” (27). There is a sustained debate amongst care-workers about how the poor should spend their money. Some judge them for having cable TV and not being able to buy milk, while others feel it’s condescending to condemn the poor for aspiring to middle-class pleasures.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Work Doesn’t Work”
The unfairness of the current economic system is demonstrated with the case of Christie, the child-care center worker in Ohio, who was paid $330 every two weeks. Although Christie is providing a fundamental service to the labor-hungry economy, she is not able to put her own two children in the daycare center where she works. Her low income entitles her to food stamps and benefits; however, whenever Christie gets the minutest pay rise, these are cut, as if she is punished for working. Working low-waged jobs with lack of benefits and no scope for promotion means that many Americans like Christie find themselves worse off when they stop working.
Poverty impacts body and health, which in turn gets in the way of promotion. Caroline Payne, despite being motivated and hard-working, cannot get promoted because “the people who got promotions had something Caroline did not. They had teeth” (52). Toothless because she did not have sufficient funds to pay for dentistry, Caroline lacked the culturally sanctioned “thousand-watt beam of friendly delight” (53) that was expected in customer service jobs. Failing dental health is the plight of many of America’s poor and according to Shipler, bad teeth “reflect and reinforce destitution” (53).
Caroline is contrasted with Brenda St. Laurence, her caseworker, who is friendly and judgmental in equal parts. Whereas Brenda came from a frugal working-class family of eight, "undisciplined" (73) Caroline, who relied on credit to buy products she couldn’t afford, came from an unstable, dysfunctional family. In her own life, dysfunctional relationships and single motherhood followed: “Women of limited means who crave and cannot create loving partnerships dominate the ranks of the poor for they are not just single mothers. They are also single wage earners” (56).
“Family turbulence can rarely be walled out of the workplace” (57) and is perilous for the low-skilled working poor because it affects their performance at work and very soon, they can find themselves jobless. This was Caroline’s plight in dealing with her tragic marriages and sacrificing her job and home security to pay for the education of her special needs daughter, Amber. As with Caroline's adverse circumstances, Shipler concludes how obstacles are exacerbated for the poor: “Money may not always cure, but it can often insulate one problem from another. Parents of means could have addressed Amber’s difficulties without uprooting themselves and discarding their assets” (76).
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
While Shipler’s case-studies are individual stories that could be representative of the experiences of many others, he takes care to paint detailed portraits of each person he interviews. He cites his subjects directly, replicating the exact patterns of their speech, in addition to describing their physicality and demeanor, all of which enables the reader to picture them vividly and empathize with them. Shipler's description of toothless Caroline Payne, who lacks a vital American beauty component—a dazzling smile—is powerful in showing how she compensates for her defect: “Caroline had learned to smile with her whole face, a sweet look that didn’t show her gums, yet it came across as wistful” (52). He then juxtaposes Caroline’s individual gumption with the more generalizing comment that “Caroline’s was the face of the working poor, marked by a poverty-generated handicap […] that reflect[s] and reinforce[s] destitution" (53). This is an example of Shipler’s use of an individual study to make a more general commentary on the plight of the poor.
Repeatedly in the first two chapters, Shipler references how the working poor are often taken advantage of due to their financial instability in conjunction with their lack of confidence and education. This is evident in Chapter 1 with the loan sharks who deliberately position themselves in poor neighborhoods, so as to attract the attention of desperate, low-income people. They then proceed to charge unlimited levels of interest so that the borrowers end up in a greater debt than they began with. The intricacies of the welfare system and many poor people’s lack of financial and political awareness is another way in which they are taken advantage of by middlemen and squandered out of their meagre income.
Moreover, given that most of Shipler’s case studies began as young women from poor and often disruptive backgrounds, another type of predation is the men they involve themselves with. These men are dysfunctional partners, as they saddle the young women with children and are often unsystematic with their child support payments. This means that a low-skilled woman is left to support a whole family on her inadequate wages.
