Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein

Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein interviewed 214 welfare- reliant women in the early 1990s about the economic circumstances that led them to choose welfare benefits over work. In the following viewpoint, the authors maintain that the minimum wage jobs available to unskilled single mothers leave them no better off financially than remaining or signing onto the welfare rolls. According to Edin and Lein, low- wage work does not offer the training, experience, or education that would facilitate advancement into higher paying jobs and lacks the medical coverage available to families under the welfare system. For these reasons, many mothers who would prefer the self-sufficiency of regular work resign themselves to dependency on welfare. Edin and Lein are the authors of Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work.

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