While at Rockefeller, she met her first husband, John Ehrenreich, and became involved in both the antiwar movement and the cause for improving health care for low-income families. in cell biology at Rockefeller University. It was based on the idea that the government should intervene to help stabilize the economy.) She earned a bachelor's degree in chemical physics from Reed College in 1964 and a Ph.D. (The New Deal was legislation presented by President Roosevelt in the wake of the Great Depression. Though Barbara Ehrenreich is best known for her 2001 investigation of the working poor, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, her career as a journalist and social critic spans three decades.īarbara Alexander was born Augin Butte, Montana, the daughter of New Deal Democrats.

Due to an accessible style and subject matter, Nickel and Dimed became a bestseller that helped restart dialogue on the current state of American work, American values, and the consequences of letting a national emergency remain unacknowledged for too long. While she freely admits that hers is an unusual situation, she stresses it is also a best-case scenario others face many more difficulties in their daily lives, such as the lack of available transportation. In different states and in several different jobs, she attempts three times to live for one month at minimum wage, giving up her middle-class comforts to experience the overlooked hardships of a large sector of America. Rather than simply listen to other people's accounts, Ehrenreich herself assumes the role of a minimum-wage worker. Spurred on by recent welfare reforms and the growing phenomenon of the working poor in the United States, Ehrenreich poses a hypothetical question of daily concern to many Americans: how difficult is it to live on a minimum-wage job? For the lower class, what does it take to match the income one earns to the expenses one must pay? She argues that their spirit and dignity are chipped away by a culture that allows unjust and unlivable working conditions, which results in their becoming a de facto, or actual without being official, servant class.

When one is charged a little bit at a time until the expense grows beyond expectations, that is called being 'nickel and dimed.' In 2001's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, essayist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich applies this notion to minimum-wage workers. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America

Nickel and dimed author