The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment

نویسندگان

  • David Autor
  • Alan Manning
  • Christopher L. Smith
چکیده

We reassess the effect of minimum wages on US earnings inequality using additional decades of data and an IV strategy that addresses potential biases in prior work. We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distribution, though by substantially less than previous estimates, suggesting that rising lower tail inequality after 1980 primarily reflects underlying wage structure changes rather than an unmasking of latent inequality. These wage effects extend to percentiles where the minimum is nominally nonbinding, implying spillovers. We are unable to reject that these spillovers are due to reporting artifacts, however. (JEL J22, J31, J38, K31)

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

آیا اثر افزایش حداقل دستمزدها بر تورم در اقتصاد ایران به وضعیت ادوار تجاری اقتصاد کلان مرتبط است؟

Over past decades there have been conflicting views on whether raising the minimum wage increases inflation. This study updates and expands earlier research into this subject and fills a void in the empirical literature by studying that the impacts of the minimum wage on inflation could be altered in the different economic situations. In framework of cost push inflation theoretical background, ...

متن کامل

Evidence on Wage Inequality, Worker Education, and Technology

To explain these patterns, a variety of theories have been advanced, including those stressing the growth of international trade, changes in institutions (e.g., declining unionization and real minimum wage), rising immigration, and technological change. Growing levels of imports into the United States, for instance, may have hit workers in tradesensitive industries (e.g., textiles and apparel) ...

متن کامل

The Role of Unionization on the U.S. Wage Inequality During the Period 1990-2010

This paper proposes a semi-parametric estimation method known as ‘Box-Cox Unconditional Quantile Regression’ to explain the increasing trend of the U.S. wage inequality over the last two decades for men and women separately. Box-Cox Unconditional Quantile Regression is a generalization of the Linear Unconditional Quantile Regression model proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009). The main c...

متن کامل

Accounting for the Evolution of U.S. Wage InequalityThe usual disclaimer applies

A large literature has documented an increase of U.S. wage inequality over the past several decades. This paper asks how far one can go towards accounting for the evolution of several measures of U.S. wage inequality based on a stochastic human capital model. The model features four school levels with distinct labor types and skill prices and Ben-Porath style human capital accumulation on the j...

متن کامل

An Impact of Globalization on Gender Wage Inequality: A case Study of Selected Developing Countries

Globalization may have different impacts on the gender wage gap depending on the specialization and trade pattern as well as the socio-economic situation. The main purpose of this paper is to examine an impact of globalization on gender wage inequality. Specifically, the hypothesis is that globalization reduces gender wage gap. For this, we have employed a panel technique for 21 selected develo...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2010