The Case of the Minimum Wage: Competing Policy ModelsThis book traces the historical evolution of minimum-wage policy and explains how models are used (and misused) by different interests to achieve their particular aims. Minimum-wage policy was initially legitimated as a broader labor-market policy aimed at achieving greater productivity and labor-market stability. As organized labor has declined as a political force in the last twenty years, the nature of the debate has metamorphized into a narrowly focused and often highly technical discussion concerned with specific effects of given specific increases in the minimum wage, such as either relieving poverty or the so-called adverse effects on youth unemployment. This change has coincided with the greatest stagnation of the minimum wage. |
Contents
Competing Models | 15 |
The Minimum Wage in Historical Perspective | 51 |
The Evolution of the Wage | 77 |
Tables | 121 |
Labor in Decline | 135 |
Logistical Regression Results | 143 |
Return to Labor Market Policy | 163 |
Notes | 189 |
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229 | |
232 | |
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Common terms and phrases
87th Congress achieve AFL-CIO American Political argued arguments average annual hourly Basic Books benefits Cambridge Committee on Labor Congressional Voting Constitutional costs Court David David Card debate decline Democrats DEMRTW disemployment effect earning employers employment Eric Foner Fair Labor Standards FLSA Government Printing Office greater high-union density higher wages Ibid income industry institutions issue Journal of Economic Krueger labor market Labor Standards Act Levin-Waldman Liberalism liberty of contract Living Wage Lochner Lochner era low-wage mini minimum wage minimum-wage increases Monopsony mum wage National neoclassical nomic nonunion members Nordlund Oren organized labor party percent Piore poverty line Princeton University Princeton University Press productivity programs Public Policy question raising the minimum Realignment REPHU Republicans right-to-work right-to-work laws Robert Senate Social society South teenagers tion U.S. Congress ultimately United States Senate V. O. Key W.W. Norton wage floor wage rates Washington welfare women York