David Brady on Labor Unions and U.S. Poverty

Poverty Research & Policy

Labor unions receive relatively little attention in U.S. poverty research and our guest for this episode, Professor David Brady, says that this is an unfortunate omission. His research in a paper with Tom VanHeuvelen finds that being in a household with a union member and even being in a state with higher rates of union membership are both correlated with a lower likelihood of being in poverty. Brady says we should pay attention to the role of unions because "political power drives the policies you get, and the policies you get drive the amount of poverty you have in society.”

David Brady is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside.