Making Ends Meet: How single mothers survive welfare and low-wage work delivers where Nickel and Dimed couldn't. Whereas the latter is often touted as an eye-opening exposé of the conditions America's working poor endure, I found Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed self-centered and methodologically flawed. Kathryn Edin (currently at Harvard) and Laura Lein (currently a dean at the University of Michigan) actually interviewed hundreds of single mothers receiving welfare or working for low wages in four cities, and re-constructed their balance sheets. (Data from previous national-level data always have previously shown their expenditures to be higher than their income.) Welfare benefits only account for approximately 60% of their budget. A similar gap exists for low-wage earners on their primary jobs. Although workers make slightly more, this is offset by higher expenses.

The authors also survey how these women make up the rest: through unreported or underground work, contributions from boyfriends or absent fathers, friends, and family, and charities. Their work convincingly shows that welfare recipients are very frugal, can not get by on their benefits alone, and which aspects of the system don't work. Unfortunately, the field research was done in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Aid to Families with Dependent Children was still in effect, and there might be subject selection bias since they required personal introductions for mothers to open up to them. Nonetheless, Edin and Lein make an academically rigorous and convincing case for improving America's safety net.

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