Nickel and Dimed is a work of investigative journalism. In the book, author Barbara Ehrenheich takes a series of jobs that pay minimum wage to discover how people who earn a low income make ends meet. She learns that surviving on minimum wage is so difficult that most workers can't afford to rent apartments or live on their own. She also learns that the work is degrading and that the people who are meant to provide assistance to the poor aren't always helpful.
In the introduction, Ehrenreich describes her real life as a writer with a Ph.D. in biology and an upper middle class home and life. On the advice of Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, Ehrenreich decides to take on an experiment to show the world what it’s really like to live as an unskilled, low-wage worker. To do this, she tries to survive in a variety of different settings, choosing three very different cities and finds a job and a place to live in each. She attempts to live only on the money she makes at whatever job she finds, though she makes the decision not to go hungry and to use a credit card if absolutely necessary. She brings enough money to get set up in an apartment or other dwelling, about $1,300. She attempts to find lodgings thatshe could sustain only with the money coming in from a job.
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