Everyone deserves to earn a fair wage that keeps them from falling below the poverty threshold.
"It was particularly ludicrous for our clients, who were below the poverty threshold and had partners who would never be looking at the designated publication," Professor Rhode said.
This figure represents a 20% increase year-on-year, with an average 16.1 million people living below the poverty threshold in 2014.
Both figures put employees below the poverty threshold for a family of four — even those working 40 hours a week, which many employers don't allow.
In 2016 the median hourly wage of the country's nearly 9 million retail workers was $10.37, below the poverty threshold for a family of four.
The study, which examined nine years of data, tried to measure the program's effects on people whose incomes remained below the poverty threshold.
A United Nations study released last year found more people living below the poverty threshold in eight states in India than in all of sub- Saharan Africa.
But 2015 poverty indicators are still much lower than those from the early days of President Vladimir Putin's first term in 2000, when 29% of the population found itself below the poverty threshold.
A full-time, year-round minimum wage worker, often employed in a dead-end job, falls below the poverty threshold for a family of three and often has to rely on food stamps.
If you are thinking, Well, then they should find better-paying jobs, consider this: more than one out of five jobs in the U.S. pays at a rate that is below the poverty threshold (Waldron et al, 2004).
The study found that rates of alcoholism were higher among men (16.7percentt), Native Americans (16.6percentt), people below the poverty threshold (14.3percentt), and people living in the Midwest (14.8percentt).
