Out of Poverty
Sweatshops in the Global Economy

This book explores how sweatshops provide the best opportunity to workers and the role they play in the process of development.

Benjamin Powell (Author)

9781107029903, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2014

198 pages, 9 b/w illus. 6 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.46 kg

'The term 'sweatshops' is a dirty word to students on American campuses and activists around the world, implying exploited workers toiling in horrible conditions for long hours at low pay. Powell's splendid new book gives us another perspective: how workers view sweatshops as an opportunity for improving their economic condition. Indeed, countless Americans, Japanese, and others enjoy their high standard of today living because their grandmothers and grandfathers worked in sweatshops a century ago.' Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College, and author of Free Trade Under Fire

This book provides a comprehensive defense of third-world sweatshops. It explains how these sweatshops provide the best available opportunity to workers and how they play an important role in the process of development that eventually leads to better wages and working conditions. Using economic theory, the author argues that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement has agitated for would actually harm the very workers they intend to help by creating less desirable alternatives and undermining the process of development. Nowhere does this book put 'profits' or 'economic efficiency' above people. Improving the welfare of poorer citizens of third world countries is the goal, and the book explores which methods best achieve that goal. Out of Poverty will help readers understand how activists and policy makers can help third world workers.

1. Introduction
2. The anti-sweatshop movement
3. The economics of sweatshop wage determination
4. Don't cry for me Kathie Lee: how sweatshop wages compare to alternatives
5. Health, safety, and working conditions laws
6. Save the children?
7. Is it ethical to buy sweatshop products?
8. A history of sweatshops, 1780–2010
9. The process of economic development
10. What good can activists do?
11. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International business [KJK], Labour economics [KCF], Economics [KC]