Today in America, 42 million women and 28 million children who depend on them live in poverty or on its brink. When families live paycheck to paycheck, it takes a human and economic toll on all of us. Join The Shriver Report and the Center for American Progress and learn more about the vital and timely policy issues facing families teetering on the brink.
Increasing the Minimum Wage
Too many Americans are working long hours for wages that are too low to support their families. The federal minimum wage is a poverty wage: $7.25 per hour, which is just $15,080 annually for a full-time worker and $4,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Women in particular struggle to make ends meet, as two-thirds of all workers who are paid the minimum wage or less are women.
Congress is expected to consider minimum wage legislation this spring. The Fair Minimum Wage Act would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. This increase would help 28 million American workers, including 15 million women, get by and lift 900,000 people out of poverty. 20 states already have wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage and advocates in many states are working to achieve state-level minimum wage increases.
The above excerpt was originally published in ShriverReport.org.
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