Other high-income countries have also experienced declining manufacturing sectors over the past four decades, but most of them have not experienced as much labor market polarization as the United States. Labor market polarization has been the most severe in liberal market economies like the US, Britain, and Australia. Countries like Denmark and France have been subject to the same economic pressures, but due to their more "inclusive" (or "egalitarian") labor market institutions, such as centralized and solidaristic collective bargaining and strong minimum wage laws, they have experienced less polarization.
Cross-national studies have found that European countries' working poverty rates are much lower than the US's. Most of this difference can be explained by the fact that European countries' welfare states are more generous than the US's. The relationship between generous welfare states and low rates of working poverty is elaborated upon in the "Risk Factors" [.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_poor#Risk_factors ..] and "Anti-Poverty Policies" [.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_poor#Anti-poverty_policies ..] sections.
The following graph uses data from Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) to show the working poverty rates for a small sample of countries. Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) accessed this data through the Luxembourg Income Study. This graph measures household, rather than person-level, poverty rates. A household is coded as "poor" if its income is less than 50% of its country's median income. This is a relative, rather than absolute, measure of poverty. A household is classified as "working" if at least one member of the household was employed at the time of the survey. The most important insight contained in this graph is that the US has strikingly higher working poverty rates than European countries.
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