User talk:Amcook/Sandbox

First Review Feedback

This entry is shaping up well! Clearly written. Rife with relevant citations and detail. Hats off. I MADE SEVERAL SMALL LINE EDITS DIRECTLY INTO THE TEXT, so check for those. Here are some additional suggestions.

“currently”: Do a search for the terms “current” “until now” “will now” “recently”. You’ll find their usage in about eight places. Either get rid of these phrases altogether or be more precise (e.g., “as of 2011”).

Definitions Section: I might change the subheadings from “Definition in the US” and “Definition in Europe” to “Poverty Line in US” and “Poverty Line in Europe”. This would more accurately describe the section, and you already explain the connection between the poverty line and working poverty in your opening paragraph. Also, move the wikilink for “poverty line” from the US section to its first mention in the opening paragraph.

Descriptions Section: Try to come up with a more precise title for this section. Maybe “characteristics of the working poor in the U.S.”? I added U.S. because this section seems to be focused on the U.S.

Race and Working Poverty Section: Rather than comparing White Ams to Asian Ams and Af Ams to Latin Ams, compare them all to one another. But actually, I’d probably cut this line altogether because there is no significant variation-- you point that out in the prior sentence.

Lived Experiences Section: way to bring up Newman and Ehrenreich! Add wikilinks to their names (and books?).

Explanations Section: you use questions as section title here. I think it works, but I haven’t seen that approach in other Wikipedia entries. If others do it, you’re fine. If not, you might consider rephrasing the section titles to align with Wikipedia conventions. Also, you might want to write a more precise title than “Explanations”—e.g., “Explaining demographic and compositional variation”. Also, I know you’re still working on this section, but find a source to cite rather than saying “the common narrative in popular culture and academia.”

US and Europe Compared: Change the sentence “For our purposes, however, the most important thing to note about this graph is the disparity between US and European working poverty rates.” To something like “the most important insight contained in this graph, though, is that the US has strikingly higher working poverty rates than does Europe.”

Change the sentence “This would imply that working poverty is a problem that countries face during times of economic crises, but not during times of economic growth” to something like “..that working poverty rates surge during economic downturns, and fall during economic upswings.” (I don’t think anyone would argue that the problem entirely goes away)

Proposed Solutions: I like the organization of this section a lot. Look for more citations though. Here are a could spots that stand out in particularl

Find a citation for “A common critique of this proposal is that a generous welfare state would not work in the US because it would stagnate the economy, raise unemployment, and degrade the work ethic.”

Find a citation for Therefore, many would argue that, in order to build (or re-build) a more generous welfare state, the US labor movement must rebuild its strength.

SECOND REVIEWISH type feedback You say “Western Europe, households are defined as “poor” if their income is less than 60% of the median household income in their country.” You’re probably right, but I had thought it was 50% in Western Europe—maybe double check that?

You say “If we compare the "total" bars in the family composition and the education graphs, we can see that the rate of poverty (and working poverty) among families is much higher than the rate of poverty among individuals. For instance, the rate of overall poverty among families is 17%, whereas the rate of overall poverty among individuals is approximately 14%.” Is a 3% difference really “much higher”? And if you want to make this point, add a sentence offering a possible explanation for families higher poverty rates.