2% of women held two full-time jobs at the same time. This can be physically exhausting and can often lead to short and long-term health problems. Low-Status Work Many low-wage service sector jobs require a great deal of customer service work. Although not all customer service jobs are low-wage or low-status, many of them are. Some argue that the low status nature of some jobs can have negative psychological effects on workers, but others argue that low status workers come up with coping mechanisms that allow them to maintain a strong sense of self-worth. One of these coping mechanisms is called boundary work. Boundary work happens when one group of people valorize their own social position by comparing themselves to another group, who they perceive to be inferior in some way. For example, Newman (1999) found that fast food workers in New York City cope with the low-status nature of their job by comparing themselves to the unemployed, who they perceive to be even lower-status than themselves. Thus, although the low-status nature of working poor people's jobs may have some negative psychological effects, some, but probably not all, of these negative effects can be counteracted through coping mechanisms such as boundary work. Anti-poverty policies Scholars, policymakers, and others have come up with a variety of proposals for how to reduce or eliminate working poverty. Most of these proposals are directed toward the United States, but they might also be relevant to other countries. The remainder of the section outlines the pros and cons of some of the most commonly proposed solutions. Welfare state generosity Cross-national studies like Lohmann (2009) and Brady, Fullerton, and Cross (2010) clearly show that countries with generous welfare states have lower levels of working poverty than countries with less-generous welfare states, even when factors like demography, economic performance, and labor market institutions are taken into account. Having a generous welfare state does two key things to reduce working poverty: it raises the minimum level of wages that people are willing to accept, and it pulls a large portion of low-wage workers out of poverty by providing them with an array of cash and non-cash government benefits. Many think that increasing the United States' welfare state generosity would lower the working poverty rate. A common critique of this proposal is that a generous welfare state would not work because it would stagnate the economy, raise unemployment, and