The risk of poverty is very unevenly distributed in society. Some groups -unemployed people, lone parents, large families, people with disabilities, and some ethnic groups -have much higher poverty rates than average. Some events -losing a job, marital breakdown, having children -also put people at high risk of poverty. But being in a high-risk group does not necessarily mean you will be poor, nor does experiencing an event with a high poverty risk attached to it. Some people avoid poverty, despite being in high-risk groups or facing high-risk events. This article focuses on one such group -low-paid workers -and explores whether and how people in low-paid jobs are able to avoid poverty. We consider three main options -own wages and in particular working long hours, living with other people and sharing income, and state transfers through the tax and benefit system -and compare these across different family and household types. The results highlight the importance of household living arrangements in protecting low-waged individuals against poverty.

The existence of income mobility may moderate concerns about growing inequalities, especially if income mobility has increased. However, the evidence for rising mobility is equivocal, and its extent is not enough to offset the growth of cross‐sectional inequality. There is a case for greater concern for, and different policies towards, those persistently or recurrently poor than those only temporarily poor, but the data analysed here suggest that the bulk of low income observations come from the first two categories. Analysis of income mobility may help understand why people's incomes follow different trajectories and how policy might affect this.

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adolescence, adult income, area effects, family effects,

At least until the last few years, the proportion of teenagers who have had sex rose steadily, and they are more likely to use contraceptives than their earlier counterparts. Underlying this general trend has been an increase in sexual activity among young teens-ages 15 and under-as well as middle-class and white teenagers. Contraceptive use has risen also, probably because of the fear of AIDS and the increased sexual activity among white and middle-class teenagers. Because more teenagers were using contraceptives, the pregnancy rate per 1,000 sexually active teenagers actually declined during the 1980s, even as more teenagers were having sex. Nevertheless, contraceptive use is far from perfect, leading to high levels of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and nonmarital births. The challenge for school-based programs is to pursue two simultaneous goals: lower the level of sexual activity and raise the rate of contraceptive use among those who have sex.