the minimum wage, wage subsidies, and poverty

9
THE MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, AND POVERTY R. D. HUSBY* In an attempt to augment the lowest wages, the United States and several other countries utilize legal minimum wages. However, the minimum wage has potentially adverse employment effects. The analysis here suggests that an alternative policy that combines a minimum wage and a wage subsidy is superior to either by itself. Such a combination can assist the low wage worker, avoid disemployment effects, and max- imize market eficiency. 1. INTRODUCTION April 1, 1991 marked the first day of a significant rise in the minimum wage, from $3.80 to $4.25 an hour. Critics charge that a minimum-wage earner still is con- signed to poverty. The 1991 poverty thresholds for families of one, two, three, and four are $6,932, $8,865, $10,860, and $13,924, respectively (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). However, working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year (2,000 hours a year) at the current minimum wage, one would earn only $8,500 annually. To lift a family of four out of poverty, an employed household head would require a mini- mum wage in excess of $6.96 an hour. Critics also charge that the minimum wage at best is a blunt instrument in the fight against poverty. Studies indicate that many minimum-wage earners are the sec- ondary family workers in middle- and higher-income families. Burkhauser et al. (1989, p. 54) point out “that the once- strong link between low wages and pov- erty has been broken.” In 1949,77 percent ‘Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This is a re- vised version of a paper presented at the Western Eco- nomic Association International 67th Annual Confer- ence, San Francisco, Calif., July 11, 1992, in a session organized by the author. The author thanks Bill Dick- ens, A. James Heins, Charles Kahn, Mike Lehmann, William Lord, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Contemporary Policy Issues Vol. XI, July 1993 of (nonelderly) families headed by a low- wage worker were poor, but by 1984, that percentage had dropped to 37 percent. Teenagers working in fast-food restau- rants receive the minimum wage, but most of them are in nonpoor households. The minimum wage also suffers as an anti-poverty device in that it does not vary with family size. A single full-time full- year minimum-wage earner is above the poverty line, but the same wage leaves a family of three or more below the poverty line. Legislating higher minimums for larger families would not solve the prob- lem, however. Employers would rush to hire single individuals and would spurn earners with large families who perhaps need the income more. Furthermore, recent welfare reform dis- cussions and legislation clearly reveal a radical departure from attitudes about the poor that dominated policy in the 1960s and 1970s. The emphasis now is on mov- ing welfare recipients-even the single parents of small children-into the work force. The 1988 Family Support Act em- bodies this new way of thinking. This Act requires parents on welfare to register for training, job search, and employment even if they have children as young as age three. In the near future, subsidizing those who work rather than those who do not may become the most efficient means of reducing poverty. 30 @Western Economic Association International

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Page 1: THE MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, AND POVERTY

THE MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, AND POVERTY R. D. HUSBY*

In an attempt to augment the lowest wages, the United States and several other countries utilize legal minimum wages. However, the minimum wage has potentially adverse employment effects. The analysis here suggests that an alternative policy that combines a minimum wage and a wage subsidy is superior to either by itself. Such a combination can assist the low wage worker, avoid disemployment effects, and max- imize market eficiency.

1. INTRODUCTION

April 1, 1991 marked the first day of a significant rise in the minimum wage, from $3.80 to $4.25 an hour. Critics charge that a minimum-wage earner still is con- signed to poverty. The 1991 poverty thresholds for families of one, two, three, and four are $6,932, $8,865, $10,860, and $13,924, respectively (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). However, working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year (2,000 hours a year) at the current minimum wage, one would earn only $8,500 annually. To lift a family of four out of poverty, an employed household head would require a mini- mum wage in excess of $6.96 an hour.

Critics also charge that the minimum wage at best is a blunt instrument in the fight against poverty. Studies indicate that many minimum-wage earners are the sec- ondary family workers in middle- and higher-income families. Burkhauser et al. (1989, p. 54) point out “that the once- strong link between low wages and pov- erty has been broken.” In 1949,77 percent

‘Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This is a re- vised version of a paper presented at the Western Eco- nomic Association International 67th Annual Confer- ence, San Francisco, Calif., July 11, 1992, in a session organized by the author. The author thanks Bill Dick- ens, A. James Heins, Charles Kahn, Mike Lehmann, William Lord, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

Contemporary Policy Issues Vol. XI, July 1993

of (nonelderly) families headed by a low- wage worker were poor, but by 1984, that percentage had dropped to 37 percent. Teenagers working in fast-food restau- rants receive the minimum wage, but most of them are in nonpoor households.

The minimum wage also suffers as an anti-poverty device in that it does not vary with family size. A single full-time full- year minimum-wage earner is above the poverty line, but the same wage leaves a family of three or more below the poverty line. Legislating higher minimums for larger families would not solve the prob- lem, however. Employers would rush to hire single individuals and would spurn earners with large families who perhaps need the income more.

Furthermore, recent welfare reform dis- cussions and legislation clearly reveal a radical departure from attitudes about the poor that dominated policy in the 1960s and 1970s. The emphasis now is on mov- ing welfare recipients-even the single parents of small children-into the work force. The 1988 Family Support Act em- bodies this new way of thinking. This Act requires parents on welfare to register for training, job search, and employment even if they have children as young as age three. In the near future, subsidizing those who work rather than those who do not may become the most efficient means of reducing poverty.

30

@Western Economic Association International

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HUSBY: MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, & POVERTY 31

In addition to failing as an anti-poverty measure, the minimum wage makes econ- omists uncomfortable for other reasons. Only 10 percent of American economists disagree with the proposition: “A mini- mum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers” (Frey et al., 1984, table 1, p. 988). Brown (1988, p. 134) aptly describes this effect:

With relatively few refinements, that simple [textbook] model-in which a minimum wage above the free- market equilibrium wage for unskilled labor moves the economy back along the demand curve for such labor, reducing empIoyment- really does summarize the heart of the matter.

Furthermore, the minimum wage reduces market efficiency.

During the early 1970s, analysts briefly discussed a wage subsidy policy primarily as an alternative to the negative income tax (NIT) (Barth and Greenberg, 1971; Kesselman, 1969, 1973; Zeckhauser, 1971; Browning, 1973). The analysis here consid- ers the wage subsidy as an alternative to the minimum wage rather than the NIT. Under a wage subsidy, policymakers would determine a target wage and then pay some percentage (say 50 percent) of the difference between this target wage and an earner’s lower wage. The findings suggest that a wage subsidy may be pref- erable to a minimum wage on employ- ment grounds and, more importantly, that combining both a minimum wage and a wage subsidy is preferable to either policy alone.

A U.S. wage subsidy already exists: the earned income credit (EIC). As of 1992, an eligible EIC recipient must have at least one child and earn less than $22,370 annu- ally. (Both earned income and adjusted gross income must be less than $22,370.) The subsidy for a family with one child (two or more children) increases with earnings at the rate of 17.7 (18.5) percent up to income level $7,500 where it peaks at $1,324 ($1,384). At income level $11,850,

it begins to decline at the rate of 12.6 (13.2) percent until reaching zero at income level $22,370. At its maximum, the EIC subsi- dizes wages by approximately 18 percent, raising a full-time full-year minimum- wage earner‘s income to $9,824 ($9,884) annually or $4.91 ($4.94) hourly.’ By con- trast, the wage subsidy proposed here also would include childless families and indi- viduals and would not rise with wages before declining with wages. It also could be more generous and decline with wages at a faster rate. However, policymakers could set the parameters as they please.

The analysis here assumes that workers respond only to the wage that they receive and not at all to the wage that employers pay. The analysis also assumes that taxes finance the wage subsidy but does not consider specific financing arrangements or tax increases.

Section I1 discusses employment and ef- ficiency implications and introduces the idea that combining a minimum wage and a wage subsidy is more efficient than ei- ther policy alone. Section I11 briefly dis- cusses administrative issues and the pos- sibility of fraud. Section IV offers conclu- sions.

II. AUGMENTING LOW WAGES

A. The Minimum Wage During this century in the United States

and in most developed countries, the com- pensation level of the lowest-paid workers has been deemed unacceptable. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a legal minimum wage to push up the low- est U.S. wages. This Act currently covers approximately 85 percent of all non-

1. A new complication exists. If a family has one child but the chid was born in 1992, then the EIC (1992) reaches a maximum of $1,698. For a family with two or more children, one born in 1992, the maximum is $1,754. For a full-time minimum-wage earner with one child (two or more children), the wage plus credit would be $10,198 ($10,258) annually or $5.10 ($5.13) hourly.

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32 CONTEMPORARY POLICY ISSUES

supervisory employees. The first mini- mum wage was 25 cents an hour, 42 per- cent of the average manufacturing wage. As of 1992, the $4.25 minimum wage was 37 percent of the average manufacturing wage.

Minimum-wage laws are controversial. Labor unions habitually lobby to increase the minimum wage and to extend its ben- efits to new groups. Business typically op- poses minimum-wage laws and increases on the grounds that they raise costs. Econ- omists equivocate because they fear that in competitive, low-wage labor markets, employment might fall. Basic economic theory suggests that a trade-off exists be- tween the minimum wage’s magnitude and employment. (Figure 1 shows that set- ting the minimum wage at the desired level, W,, compared to the competitive wage, W , makes employment fall from N, to Nm.) Employment among the least skilled declines as compensation for the least skilled improves. As a result, market forces may capriciously benefit some of these workers at the expense of others.

In more recent years, economists have questioned whether minimum wages have ”target efficiency” in helping the poor. That is, do the benefits go primarily to the poor? Studies indicate that, on the con- trary, more than half of all low-wage workers are members of families in the upper half of the income distribution. For example, many low-wage workers are teenagers or other secondary workers from middle- and higher-income families. Burkhauser et al. (1989) suggest that if the minimum wage were increased to 50 per- cent of the average private-sector wage, only 11 percent of the benefits would ac- crue to families below the poverty line.

Price (or wage) ceilings and floors also raise the issue of market efficiency. One can use buyer and seller surplus as a mea- sure of market efficiency. Consider an in- dividual who is willing to pay up to $100,000 for a yacht. This amount is the

reservation price-that is, the highest price a buyer would pay. If the yacht cost only $60,000, then this individual would realize a $4O,OOO consumer surplus (reser- vation price less actual price). In a simple graph of demand and supply curves, the vertical distance between the demand curve and the actual price measures this consumer surplus. In the case of a labor market, the demand curve is an array of the highest wages that employers would be willing to pay. These wages equal the value of the worker’s contribution to pro- duction-that is, the value of the marginal product. The curve declines due to the law of diminishing returns. The vertical dis- tance between the labor demand curve and the actual wage measures employer surplus. On the employee side, the reser- vation wage is the wage below which a worker would refuse employment. The difference between the actual wage and the worker’s reservation wage is em- ployee surplus. The sum of employer and employee surpluses for all employed workers is the total surplus. (In figure 1, with competitive wage W, and employ- ment N, , total surplus is the area of trian- gle abQ.) Total surplus is a measure of market efficiency. The higher the surplus, the greater the efficiency.

Assuming that low-wage labor markets conform to the competitive model, a min- imum wage above the competitive wage would force firms to move back along their demand curves and hire fewer persons. The employer and employee surpluses for these laid-off workers would then consti- tute a deadweight loss in surplus or mar- ket efficiency. (In figure l, with minimum wage W d , employment falls to Nm, em- ployer surplus shrinks to aed, employee surplus is defQ, and therefore total surplus is aefQ. The deadweight loss is q u a 1 to ebf.)

A very large body of literature exists on the minimum wage and its impact on em- ployment. In a comprehensive survey of over 100 articles, Brown et al. (1982,

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HUSBY: MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, & POVERTY 33

p. 524) conclude: “Time-series studies typ- ically find that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduces teenage employ- ment by 1 to 3 percent.” These authors believe that the estimates between 1 and 2 percent are the most plausible. In their survey of cross-section studies, they find reductions in the same range and prefer the estimates between zero and 0.75 per- cent. They also find the effect on young adults to be negative but smaller than the effect on teenagers.

Some recent studies suggest no dis- employment effects. In a study of the 1988 increase in the California minimum wage, Card (1991, p. 2) finds “no evidence that the rise in the minimum wage has an ad- verse employment effect.” Katz-Krueger (1991 and 1992) uses evidence from Texas fast-food restaurants and reaches the same conclusion. In a cross-section study by state, Card (1992, p. 2) finds that, ”surpris- ingly, there is no evidence that the rise in teenage wages resulted in any loss in teen- age employment.” On the other hand, Castillo-Freeman and Freeman (1992) find that in Puerto Rico a relatively high min- imum wage leads to substantial employ- ment losses.

Undoubtedly, 1990 and 1991 increases in the minimum wage will inspire another round of articles on the employment im- pacts, with unanimity unlikely. The jury will not be in on this issue anytime soon. The analysis here assumes a trade-off be- tween the minimum wage and employ- ment for low-paid workers that is consis- tent with the basic competitive model and discusses a policy that would assure a minimum (desirable) compensation with no employment losses and with a mini- mum loss in market efficiency.

B. The Wage Subsidy and Combined Minimum W a g e a g e Subsidy A wage subsidy is an alternative

method of lifting the least skilled’s wages. Instead of employers paying an amount

higher than the so-called competitive wage, the government subsidizes wages up to the socially desired minimum level. Given the usual assumptions regarding the shapes of demand and supply curves, this approach leads to employment levels even higher than the competitive level (N, in figure 1). Unfortunately, this ap- proach also involves a loss of market effi- ciency. The derivation of this loss is not relevant to the analysis here but is graph- ically represented by the area of triangle pbs (figure 1).

The analysis here concentrates not on a simple wage subsidy but on a policy com- bining a minimum wage and a wage sub- sidy. Such a policy potentially can aug- ment low-income earners’ wages with no loss in efficiency. Assume one (competi- tive) known wage for unskilled labor, and let the legal minimum wage be set at this competitive level. A wage subsidy to raise compensation to the desired level would involve a “target wage“ or “break-even wage” higher than the desired wage level. The government would pay a subsidy equal to some percentage (less than 100) of the difference between the target wage and the legal minimum wage. For exam- ple, if the target wage is $9 and the legal minimum wage is $5, a subsidy paying 50 percent of the difference could achieve the desired compensation level of $7. As- sume also that the wage of skilled labor is above the target wage.

If the government simply paid a sub- sidy equal to 100 percent of the difference between the target wage and the actual wage, the employer would have a per- verse incentive not to raise the wage be- tween the minimum wage and the target. For example, under a 100 percent subsidy, if the minimum wage is $5 and the target wage is $7, the subsidy is $2 and the worker receives a subsidized wage of $7. If the employer raises the wage to $6, the subsidy falls to $1, and the worker still ends up with $7. Therefore, the employer has no reason to raise the wage between

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34 CONTEMPORARY POLICY ISSUES

FIGURE 1 Wage Augmentation and Market Efficiency

Wage

$5 and $7. However, the analysis here pro- poses a less than 100 percent (e.g./ 50 per- cent) wage subsidy that avoids this per- verse incentive. If the employer rewards a worker with a wage higher than the min- imum (but lower than the target), the sub- sidy decreases at a 50 percent rate so that the wage plus subsidy increases.

Such a subsidy parallels the negative income tax (NIT) in that a well-known di- lemma exists in choosing the program's parameters. Assume that society defines a minimum (that is, a poverty threshold)

below which no family of a given size can or should have to live. Under a NIT pro- gram, some benefits must go to the non- poor. Otherwise, the program either guar- antees a family with no other income less than the minimum or sets the benefit re- duction or "tax" rate at 100 percent, leav- ing no material incentive to work. A sim- ilar dilemma exists for the wage subsidy. Given the current U.S. poverty thresholds, a full-time full-year worker requires about $7 an hour to support a family of four. If the minimum wage were $5 and the target

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HUSBY MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES. & POVERTY 35

(or break-even) wage were $9, then work- ers earning between $5 and $7 would re- ceive a subsidy bringing their total com- pensation above $7. Even those earning between $7 and $9 would receive a sub- sidy. The only alternatives would be a sub- sidized minimum wage well below $7, which is inconsistent with the poverty threshold, or a 100 percent subsidization rate, which leads to the perverse incentive.

Under the combined policy, employ- ment would not fall and market efficiency would not decline. Employers would hire the same number of workers as they would in an unfettered competitive mar- ket because they are required to pay only a minimum wage equal to the competitive wage. Additionally, the employer surplus would be the same as in the free market case since the demand curve is the same and the wage paid is the same. The em- ployee surplus actually would be greater than in the free market case by the amount of the subsidy, but a taxpayer loss of sur- plus equal to the subsidy also exists, so the transfer from taxpayer to recipient washes out. (In figure 1, the employer surplus is abc, and the employee surplus is dgbQ. The total dollar amount of the surplus is the area of the rectangle dgbc. This area also represents the taxpayer loss in surplus since the taxpayer pays for these subsi- dies. Subtracting dgbc from dgbQ yields a net employee/taxpayer surplus of cbQ. In this case, the total surplus then is abc plus cbQ equals abQ, exactly the same as in the competitive case.) Therefore, no dead- weight loss exists.

This analysis implicitly assumes that firms hire workers with the lowest reser- vation wage. In reality, firms would hire randomly along the supply curve and therefore randomly with respect to reser- vation wages. However, this fact would not affect employer surplus in any way. Firms would continue to hire as long as the value of the additional worker's mar- ginal product exceeds the wage. There- fore, firms would hire the same number of

workers as in the laissez-faire competitive case. The sum of these differences (value of the marginal product less the wage) for all hired workers is the employer surplus, which is completely independent of the worker's reservation wage. The employee surpluses would be the same as if all workers had a reservation wage equal to the average reservation wage and employ- ment were at the competitive level. In con- trast, under a simple minimum wage, the employee and employer surpluses would be lost for those workers who lose their jobs. (In figure 1, given the desired mini- mum compensation level W,, the quantity of labor supplied is N,. The midpoint (x) of the Q p portion of the supply curve in- dicates the average reservation wage. Therefore, hiring randomly along Qp yields the same result as if the supply curve were the horizontal line jr. In this case, the minimum wage yields a total sur- plus equal to the area of aenj. Under a strategy combining a minimum wage and a wage subsidy, surplus would be aenj plus ebtn where ebtn is positive.) The com- bined strategy unambiguously leads to greater market efficiency.

One therefore need not assume that em- ployers hire workers with the lowest res- ervation wage in order to prove that the combined policy is superior to the mini- mum wage in terms of market efficiency. (However, this assumption is necessary to prove that the combined policy has no deadweight loss whatsoever.) Assuming that the labor market conforms to the com- petitive model, the combined policy is su- perior in terms of both market efficiency and employment.

A final caveat touches upon an earlier assumption that workers with the next higher skill level receive more than the tar- get wage and therefore do not complicate the analysis. Given the same example, suppose instead that these workers have a market wage of $7 and that the desired minimum also is $7. With a $7 minimum wage, these workers earn $7 whether or

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36 CONTEMPORARY POLICY ISSUES

TABLE 1 Withholding and Negative Withholding (Wage Subsidies) for Hypothetical

Small Firm Number of

Monthly claimed Salary Deductions Withholding

Manager Secretary Subtotal Laborer Total

$2000 1400

704

2 1

2

$171a ma (176) 280

$104

'Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, "Cimlar E: Employer's Tax Guide (revised February 1992): Publication 15, Internal Revenue Service, Rancho Cordova, 1992, p. 42.

not a minimum wage exists. No employ- ment loss-and therefore no market effi- ciency loss-occurs since employers do not have to raise these workers' pay. Under the combined policy, on the other hand, these $'//hour workers would re- ceive a $1 subsidy (50 percent of the gap between $7 and the $9 target wage) for a total of $8. Workers with reservation wages up to $8 now become interested in employment. Those employed with a res- ervation wage between $7 and $8 realize an employee surplus of less than $1 even though the taxpayer loss equals $1, lead- ing to a net loss. The distribution of wages near the minimum wage then becomes es- sential to sorting out net gains and losses. To minimize this problem, the policy could set a break-even wage closer to the minimum and subsidize at a higher rate. For example, with a minimum wage of $5, a subsidy of $2, and a target wage of $8, the policy subsidizes at the rate of 67 per- cent.

111. ADMINISTRATION AND THE POTENTIAL FOR FRAUD

The simplest way to implement this subsidy would be to integrate it into the firm's income tax withholding proce-

dures. The employer could pay the sub- sidy. The government could reimburse the employer through "negative withhold- ing." Employers now send checks to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for tax withheld from their employees' wages. The subsidies could be netted out against the withholding. Table 1 gives an example. To simplify, assume one manager, one sec- retary, and one laborer. In this example, the withholding for the higher-paid em- ployees exceeds the subsidy for the lower- paid. The firm would owe the IRS $104 at the end of the month. In the event that the subsidies were greater than the withhold- ing, the IRS would send a check to the firm.

One must consider two related issues: the possibility of fraud and the possibility that members of nonpoor households will receive a legal subsidy. Cases that illus- trate such possibilities include the follow- ing: (i) A business owner puts a spouse or other family member on the payroll to col- lect the subsidy even though the person does not work. (ii) A teenager in a well-to- do family earns the minimum wage plus subsidy. (iii) Multiple family members each earn a low wage plus subsidy. (iv) An individual who holds down several ficti-

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HUSBX MINIMUM WAGE, WAGE SUBSIDIES, & POVERTY 37

tious jobs collects the subsidy from each and kicks back the wages. These issues and the details of administration are sub- jects worthy of further research. However, the policy could minimize fraud and max- imize target efficiency by requiring em- ployers to ask applicants how many de- pendents they have and how much other employed family members earn. By law, a family member could receive the subsidy only if family income were below a certain level that varies with family size, and only one person per family could receive the subsidy. The family's tax return should allow the IRS to enforce these rules.

One discussant of this paper has sug- gested that in a competitive market, the unemployed would bid the effective wage, via bribes, back down to the competitive wage. That is, the unemployed would offer bribes to potential employers in order to secure employment. The competitive so- lution would be a bribe equal to the sub- sidy. If such behavior took place under the combined policy, it certainly would take place with a simple minimum wage. The unemployed would be even greater in the latter case (Ns-Nm in figure 1). The evidence on minimum-wage compliance cannot easily be reconciled. Ashenfelter and Smith (1979) estimate that only 55 to 65 percent of workers who should be af- fected by the minimum wage receive the minimum, but according to a Minimum Wage Study Commission (1981) survey, 95 percent of firms comply. The point is that whatever fraud or noncompliance now exists, changing over to a combined policy likely would not expand it.

IV. CONCLUSION

The questions of how to finance a wage subsidy and how to persuade Congress to pass it are bound to come up in a policy- oriented discussion. With the government running unprecedented budget deficits, persuading Congress would not be easy. Advocates would have to explain that

consumers' gains from lower prices due to lower employer payrolls would outweigh the taxes. This is no easy task. In layman's terms, however, this is the meaning of the gain in market efficiency. Additionally, if passage of a wage subsidy signaled a change in the direction of policy-subsi- dizing the employed rather than the un- employed-society also could realize sav- ings from traditional welfare programs. At the same time, less than full-year employ- ees and employees who cannot work full time or who are not a part of the labor force undoubtedly would require welfare programs. However, one should expect a well-designed wage subsidy to reduce the number of people who depend on these welfare programs. The best method of fi- nancing a wage subsidy remains a subject for future research.

Some empirical studies suggest that the minimum wage does not contribute to un- employment among the poor, but the min- imum wage policy continues to trouble economists. If the minimum wage reduces employment, then it also reduces market efficiency in low-wage labor markets. A simple wage subsidy, as opposed to the combined policy, would not contribute to unemployment. In fact, it could increase employment-but at the cost of similar losses in market efficiency. Provided that the minimum approximated the competi- tive equilibrium wage, a combined policy would be more efficient. That is, the lower consumer prices that result from the lower employer-paid minimum wage would outweigh the public costs of subsidizing workers.

In addition, the combined policy is the superior anti-poverty strategy in terms of target efficiency. The minimum wage is constant for all family sizes. A wage sub- sidy could vary with family size. For ex- ample, the subsidy, could be zero, one, two, and three dollars for one, two, and three dependents, and so forth. Employers then would have no incentive to discrim- inate against large families. The teenage

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38 CONTEMPORARY POLICY ISSUES

workers of middle- and higher-income families would receive no subsidy, but the sole unskilled breadwinner of a family of five would receive a subsidy large enough to lift the family out of poverty.

Compared to the existing minimum wage policy, the combined minimum wage/wage subsidy policy produces no disemployment effects, achieves greater market efficiency, avoids subsidies to the nonpoor, and enjoys greater target effi- ciency through varying the subsidy by family size.

REFERENCES

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Barth, Michael, "Market Effects of a Wage Subsidy," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, July 1974, 572-585.

Brown, Charles, Curtis Gihy, and Andrew Kohen, "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employ- ment and Unemployment," Journal of Economic Literature, June 1982,487-528.

Brown, Charles, "Minimum Wage Laws: Are they Overrated," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Sum- mer 1988,133-145.

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Castillo-Freeman, Alida, and Richard B. Freeman, "When the Minimum Wage Really Bites," in George b i a s and Richard Freeman, Immigration and fhe Work Force: Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas, University of Chi- cago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1992,177-Zl1.

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Katz, Lawrence F., and Alan B. Krueger, "The Effect of the New Minimum Wage Law in a Low-Wage Labor Market," Princeton University Industrial Relations section Working Paper #280, January 1991.

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Kesselman, Jonathan, "Labor-Supply Effects of In- come, Income-Work, and Wage Subsidies," Jour- nal of Human Resources, Summer 1%9, 275-292.

, "A Comprehensive Approach to Income Maintenance: SWIlT," Journal of Public Economics, February 1973,5948.

Minimum Wage Study Commission, "Noncompliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act," Report of the Minimum Wage Study Commission, Volume 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1981,151-62.

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