Research Roundup
A Quarterly Selection of New Research on Jobs, Workplace Standards and the Economy
Making Ends Meet: How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Family in California?
California Budget Project
This report estimates the costs of housing, utilities, child care, transportation, food, health coverage, taxes, and other necessities for families with two children and for single adults. The study reports these basic budgets for the state as a whole and for 10 regions throughout the state, including Los Angeles.
Unions and Upward Mobility for Low-Wage Workers
By John Schmitt, Margy Waller, Shawn Fremstad and Ben Zipperer
Center for Economic and Policy Research
This report analyzes 15 of the lowest paying occupations in the United States and finds that unionized workers earn about 16% more than their non-unionized counterparts. Unionized workers in the same industries are also 25 percentage points more likely to have health insurance or a pension plan.
Health Coverage Expansion in California: What Can Consumers Afford to Spend?
By Ken Jacobs, Korey Capozza, Dylan H. Roby, Gerald F. Kominski, E. Richard Brown
UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
This research brief finds that many California families spend a substantial amount of their annual income on health care premiums and out-of-pockets costs, and could face financially devastating medical expenses if they are not adequately protected. The report recommends that reasonable limits be placed on cost-sharing and premiums in order to allow families from all income levels to afford health care coverage.
Communicating About Poverty and Low-Wage Work: A New Agenda
By Matthew C. Nisbet, PhD.
The Mobility Agenda
The report includes a review of previous findings on how the public and the media interpret issues related to poverty and low-wage work – including a review of public opinion surveys in the last two decades and a summary of the enduring core values, stereotypes, and patterns in news coverage that anchor the public’s ambivalence about poverty. More recent research examining the communication dynamics of the 1990s welfare reform debate reveals that despite great optimism about current polling trends, American views about poverty are little different today than they were during the 1980s.
Work, Work Supports, and Safety Nets: Reducing the Burden of Low-incomes in America
By Jared Bernstein
Economic Policy Institute
The author argues that in a rich, advanced economy like the United States, poverty should be viewed as an aberration. This briefing paper describes an agenda of social welfare policies that ensure that for those who are willing and able, work is a pathway out of poverty, and, for those unable to work, a safety net exists so that people to not fall into privation.
Economic Footprint of Unions in Los Angeles
By Daniel Flaming
Economic Roundtable
This study provides information about the wage advantage of union workers over non-union workers and the impact of union workers on LA’s economy. Los Angeles County’s unionized workers earn an average of 27 percent more than non-union workers in the same occupations, according the study. Unionized workers’ higher wages create ripple effects that add 64,800 jobs to the L.A. economy.
Once characterized as "Teamsters and Turtles," labor and environmentalists have worked together on workplace health and safety, environmental restoration and globalization. Obach examines why, when and how labor unions and environmental organizations either cooperate or clash. (MIT Press)
Gottlieb examines how the powerful forces of immigration and economic globalization intersect with the politics of water, transportation and land use, and illustrates each of these core concerns with an account of grassroots responses, from reclaiming the concrete-lined, fenced-off Los Angeles River as a natural resource to "Arroyofest," the closing of the Pasadena Freeway for a Sunday of walking and bike riding. 
A historical novel about the massacre of 18 men, women, and children of coal mining families at a mine owned by the Rockefellers in Colorado in 1914. The book is written in free verse, adding a poetic quality to 
Krugman’s most important message is that, after years of Republican ascendancy accompanied by rapidly growing economic inequality in the United States, the point at which the pendulum finally starts swinging in the other direction has arrived. Krugman insists that the political tide is turning, and that liberals must take advantage of it. (W.W. Norton)
