According to data from a sweeping new study of working-class legislators by political scientists Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, only about 2 percent of legislators across the world’s democracies held a working-class job — which the authors define as manual, service, or clerical work — before getting into politics. Yet as the authors document in their new book, Keeping Workers Off the Ballot: How Democracy Undermines Working-Class Representation, about seven in ten jobs in a typical democracy are working-class jobs, from construction workers and truck drivers to servers, cashiers, receptionists, data-entry clerks, day laborers, and street vendors. In the United States, working-class people make up more than half of the labor force but just 5 percent of candidates for state, county, and local office. In Brazil, workers represent more than 70 percent of the labor force but just 8 percent of candidates for the national legislature.

Drawing on a wide range of previous scholarship and original analysis, Carnes and Lupu show why having more workers in office matters. Politicians who have had working-class jobs back more pro-worker economic legislation, cabinets with more working-class ministers build more generous welfare states, and citizens trust legislatures less when they include fewer workers.

In short, “when workers don’t hold office, economic policies and outcomes are better for the haves and worse for the have-nots.” Keeping Workers Off the Ballot focuses on the obvious follow-up question: If working-class officeholders are so good for working people, why are there so few of them?