Executive Summary Insert: who are the working poor?

More than 9 million working Americans were living in poverty in 1997, and one-quarter of those worked full-time, year round. Nearly 60 percent of the working poor are women—and minority women are more than twice as likely to be poor as white women. Almost 3 million poor workers were in families with children under age 6. Ten percent of people with significant disabilities working full time fall below the poverty rate.