ATTENTION: Financial Market Interest

12 April 2001
Contact: Patricia McBroom, Public Affairs
(510) 643-7944
pmb@pa.urel.berkeley.edu

WHAT:
A lecture by a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who tells why current family income is up and poverty is down, based on a new analysis of population surveys from the years 1967 to 1999.

WHEN:
Monday, April 16, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Lunch is included.

WHERE:
Center for Working Families, UC Berkeley, at 2420 Bowditch St., two blocks south of campus at the Institute for the Study of Social Change.

WHO:
Michael Hout, UC Berkeley sociologist and co-author of the book "Inequality by Design," whose research deals with family income, education, class and equality.

BACKGROUND:
Recent statistics show that families have improved their economic situations since 1994. Incomes are up and poverty is down. How did this happen, considering that wages for the average American worker have moved hardly at all since 1977? This analysis will show that family income goes up and down with business cycles, but only because worker's hours go up and down, not because salaries have changed.