Skip navigation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp013484zg89t
Title: A Living Wage? The Effects of the Minimum Wage on the Distribution of Wages, the Distribution of Family Earnings, and Poverty
Authors: Krueger, Alan B.
Card, David
Keywords: minimum wage
distribution of income
wage inequality
poverty
Issue Date: 1-Oct-1994
Series/Report no.: Working Papers (Princeton University. Industrial Relations Section) ; 333
Abstract: This paper analyses the distributional impact of the 1990 and 1991 increases in the federal minimum wage. The rise in the federal minimum wage had very different impacts across states, depending on state-specific minimum wage floors and the overall level of wages in each state. In states with a higher fraction of workers affected by the minimum wage change, we find that the minimum wage hike generated significant increases in the lower percentiles of wages, and significant reductions in wage dispersion. The higher minimum wage also led to increases in the lower percentiles of the family earnings distribution, and a narrowing of the dispersion in family earnings. We find some evidence that the increase in the minimum wage lowered poverty rates for families with some attachment to the labor market.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp013484zg89t
Appears in Collections:IRS Working Papers

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
333.pdf3.19 MBAdobe PDFView/Download


Items in Dataspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.