Ehrenreich Case Study

obtain information about cultures. During the time of her research, about 30% of americans were working for 8 dollars an hour. Ehrenreich was appalled at the percentage of americans that were living off of so little so she set out to experience for herself the life of a minimum wage earning American. Before commencing her experiment. Ehrenreich established three rules for her self. The first rule was that she could not utilize any type of skill that she had gained from her college education or the job she occupied prior to the experiment. The second rule was that she would accept the highest paying job that was proposed to her and she would do the best in her ability to keep it. The third rule was to purchase the least expensive housing available to her, with a decent level of privacy and of course, safety.
Ehrenreich decided she would introduce herself to others as a recently divorced stay-at-home mother who was ready to enter the workforce after many years of being unemployed. She told people that she had received 3 years of college at the university at which she studied in real life. She also set some limits for herself on what she was prepared to undergo. First, she would

The first city she goes to is Key West, Florida. Here, she gets a job as a waitress working an eight hour shift from two in the afternoon to ten at night, earning two dollars and ten cents, plus tips. Two weeks into the experience, she starts to learn the unseen costs of being poor. To name a few, being uninsured doesn’t allow someone to receive medical care which then leads to minor and serious costly health problems. Also, with not enough money to pay off an apartment, many people are obligated to live in a cheap hotel which actually ends up being more costly because a kitchen is not available to you, subsequently, resulting in you going out and buying food that is extremely unhealthy for