"Supersize Them" cites the work of anthropologist Katherine S. Newman, who has done the sort of research that Charles Murray called for 20 years ago. She followed a sample of young hamburger flippers, to see how they have fared over the roughly 10-year period over which she has chronicled their lives. A couple of discoveries:

About a third of the 40 people she tracked down and re-interviewed in 2002 were unemployed or still making the minimum wage. But most had moved up, and almost a quarter were what she calls “high fliers,” making $15.46 an hour or more.

It is work, Newman writes, that “sustains a person’s sense of place in the American cultural universe.” ...[I]t is the way that Americans figure out who they are. And in that, at least, the working poor turn out to be just like everyone else.

Charles Murray conducted a similar study based on a much larger sample in his excellent "In Search of the Working Poor," (Public Interest, 1987, and nowhere on the web as far as I can determine). From the abstract of that paper (available at ProQuest).

An examination of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a longitudinal database that began with a sample of some 5,000 families in 1968, indicates that poverty in the US is seldom the result of uncontrollable events involving the economic system. It may be true that anyone who is willing to work hard can make a decent living. A large portion of people listed as being "below the poverty line" are not living in poverty. The precipitous ups and downs are frequently statistical, rather than a reflection of real changes in quality of life. Only 2.7% of working-aged adults can be classified as living in "working poor households." Many people below the poverty line are living lives they have chosen to live. Social scientists and politicians need to understand that poverty often has little to do with income.

If anyone wants to read this article, contact me, and I'll send it as a Word file. Not only does it contain useful analysis, but it also provides an excellent discussion of the sort of research that is (still) needed.