Sri Lanka’s working poor

This paper presents three perspectives of Sri Lanka's working poor. First, it provides an overview by estimating how many employed Sri Lankans are poor and by describing their characteristics by way of demographic,employment and human capital attributes. Secondly, it looks at which of these variables are most associated with the likelihood that an employed person will be poor. Thirdly, it looks at why poor working people earn too little to raise themselves above the poverty line. It uses the ILO's definition of working poverty which characterizes the working poor as those who both work and belong to poor households.