The primary goal of a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor families with members in the work force. We present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes from March CPS surveys. Using non-parametric estimates of the distributions of family income relative...

The focus on employment effects in recent studies of minimum wages ignores an important interaction between schooling, employment, and the minimum wage. To study these linkages, the authors estimate a conditional logit model of employment and enrollment outcomes for teenagers using state-year...

Minimum wages help some families to escape poverty, but employment losses associated with raising the minimum also appear to cause some families to fall into poverty. The authors' estimates suggest that on balance, the second of these effects outweighs the first; therefore, the net result of...

We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages—in the United States and other countries—that was spurred by the "new minimum wage research" beginning in the early 1990's. The wide range of existing estimates makes it difficult for us to draw broad...

The authors estimate the employment effects of changes in national minimum wages using a pooled cross-section time-series data set comprising 17 OECD countries for the period 1975–2000. The average effects they find are consistent with the view that minimum wages cause employment losses...

Using panel data on state minimum wage laws and economic conditions for the years 1973–89, the authors reevaluate existing evidence on the effects of a minimum wage on employment. Their estimates indicate that a 10% increase in the minimum wage causes a decline of 1–2% in...