Working Hard, Living Poor: Social Work and the Movement for Livable Wages

In 2001, social work researchers published Working Hard, Living Poor, a living wage study for Nevada and the opening salvo in a four-year coalition effort to raise the state's minimum wage. Social work faculty and students were active participants in that campaign; their contributions included wide distribution of the study, the development of an award-winning social welfare policy unit—Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in Northern Nevada; and advocacy, including legislative testimony and media outreach, on behalf of minimum wage legislation. This article—which poses the question, what is social work's responsibility vis-à-vis the working poor?—is a case study of that effort.