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Raise Minimum Wage Essay

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. Burkhauser found no evidence that minimum wage increases were effective at lowering overall poverty rates or poverty rates among workers. Even by targeting populations that raising the minimum wage was supposed to protect, such as less educated single mothers, Burkhauser confirms that minimum wage increases did little to alleviate poverty for less educated single mothers as well. Additionally, David Neumark of the University of California-Irvine and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board analyzed family-specific flows in and out of poverty as a result of an uptick in the minimum wage. Neumark and Wascher used current population survey data and found that when the minimum wage was increased some workers were lifted out of poverty, but others lost their jobs and found themselves in poverty as a result of raising the minimum wage. Neumark and Wascher’s findings suggest that minimum wage hikes only redistribute income among the poor and near-poor households. Only junior high school dropouts seem …show more content…

Economists such as Neumark believe that a static analysis such as that overlooks the behavioral effects of minimum wage increases. With the presence of competitive low-skilled labor markets, a government-mandated minimum wage set above the market wage rate will raise the cost of low-skilled labor to firms, creating the incentive for firms to eliminate jobs or decrease employees’ hours of work(). Many firms such as grocery chains and restaurants will start to move away from wait staff and cashiers and toward self-checkout kiosks and toward upper level skilled labor. David Neumark and William Wascher in their research confirm that some near-poor, low-skilled workers have their hours cut or lose their jobs as a result of minimum wage hikes. Resulting, in falling incomes and a rise in poverty among those households effected by the minimum wage increase

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