ECONOMIC PROSPECTS: Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pollin
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
Federal Minimum Wage

scholarly journals Exploiting the Irish Border to Estimate Minimum Wage Impacts in Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McVicar ◽  
Andrew Park ◽  
Seamus McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Research Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
Employment Rate ◽  
Small Decrease ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Hours Worked ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThis paper examines the impacts of the introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) in 1999 and the introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in 2016 in Northern Ireland (NI) on employment and hours. NI is the only part of the UK with a land border where the NMW and NLW cover those working on one side of the border but not those working on the other side of the border (i.e., Republic of Ireland). This discontinuity in minimum wage coverage enables a research design that estimates the impacts of the NMW and NLW on employment and hours worked using difference-in-differences estimation. We find a small decrease in the employment rate of 22–59/64-year-olds in NI, of up to 2% points, in the year following the introduction of the NMW, but no impact on hours worked. We find no clear evidence that the introduction of the NLW impacted either employment or hours worked in NI.

scholarly journals In Support of a 'Living Wage': Research on International and Danish Trends and Issues of 'Working Poor'.

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erling Rasmussen ◽  
Jens Lind
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Limit State ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Working Poor ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Starting Point

In May 2012, a campaign started in support of a New Zealand ‘living wage’. This happened in light of many New Zealand workers receiving wages at or just above the statutory minimum wage and that several fast-growing sectors continue to establish many low paid jobs. While the paper’s starting point is the New Zealand ‘living wage’ debate, the issues discussed have been part of international debates about the existence and consequences of low paid work. These debates have highlighted that some countries have been better at containing low paid work. On this background, this paper focuses on the trends and issues surrounding ‘working poor’ in Denmark. As detailed, the Danish labour market has succeeded in having a relatively low level of ‘working poor’. This has even happened in several service sector industries renowned for their propensity to create low paying jobs. However, the paper also questions the stability of the so-called Danish Model based on an open labour market with large in- and outflows of migrants and with a reliance on collective bargaining/agreements, with limit state regulation and, in particular, no statutory minimum wage.

scholarly journals The Washington State Merged Longitudinal Administrative Database

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Romich ◽  
Mark Long ◽  
Scott Allard ◽  
Anne Althauser
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Vital Statistics ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Administrative Database ◽  
Administrative Dataset ◽  
Federal Minimum Wage

This paper describes a uniquely comprehensive database constructed from merged state administrative data.  State Unemployment Insurance (UI) systems provide an important source of data for understanding employment effects of policy interventions but have also lack several key types of information: personal demographics, non-earnings income, and household associations.  With UI data, researchers can show overall earnings or employment trends or policy impacts, but cannot distinguish whether these trends or impacts differ by race or gender, how they affect families and children, or whether total income or other measure of well-being change. This paper describes a uniquely comprehensive new administrative dataset, the Washington Merged Longitudinal Administrative Database (WMLAD), created by University of Washington researchers to examine distributional and household economic effects of the Seattle $15 minimum wage ordinance, an intervention that more than doubled the federal minimum wage.  WMLAD augments UI data with state administrative voter, licensing, social service, income transfer, and vital statistics records. The union set of all individuals who appear in any of these agency datasets will provide a near-census of state residents and will augment UI records with information on age, sex, race/ethnicity, public assistance receipt, and household membership. In this paper, we describe 1.) our relationship with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services that permits this data access and allows construction of this dataset using restricted personal identifiers; 2.) the merging and construction process, including imputing race and ethnicity and constructing quasi-households from address co-location; and 3.) planned benchmarking and analysis work.

scholarly journals RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE OF THE US WORKFORCE

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-43
Author(s):  
Kshama Mumbai
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Wage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Purchasing Power ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Federal Minimum Wage ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Wage Floor

“The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike”, prompted the first minimum wage law in the United States in 1912. Various states followed suit over the next two decades, and in 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created a federal minimum wage (FLSA).The basic incentive behind the introduction of the Act was to reduce income inequality.A rise in minimum wage acts as a form of relocation of wealth from higher-income people to lower-income people. In principle, Congress amends the FLSA on a regular basis to raise the federal minimum wage to levels necessary for even the lowest-paying workforces in the economy.It also aims to help low-wage workers benefit from overall economywide advances in living standards. However, this has historically not always been the case. In 1968, The Poor People’s 1 Campaign started because of not raising the minimum wage to sufficient levels . The explicit purpose of the federal minimum wage is to help increase consumer purchasing power which stimulates the economy and to keep America's workforces out of poverty.However,the law failed to include the automatic cost of living adjustments and led to inflation eroding the real value of the minimum wage over time. There is a dire need for legislative action to raise the nation’s wage floor, more so than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic.Unless consumer's purchasing power is increased,it will be difficult to come out of this recession.Further,the minimum wage is a direct concern for poverty levels and gender / racial inequality.This paper aims to analyze previous work on the issue and provide further recommendations for the same.

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