Minimum wages increase the probability that teenagers leave school to become employed or work more hours, and increase the probability that they leave school and become non-enrolled and non-employed. Minimum wages also increase the probability that lower-wage employed teenagers become...

Discrimination's dynamic nature means that no single theory, method, data or study should be relied upon to assess its magnitude, causes, or remedies. Despite some gains in our understanding, these remain active areas of debate among researchers, practitioners and policymakers. The specially...

This article explores the effects of living wages on low-wage workers and low-income families. First, earlier analyses are updated using data for 1996 through 2002, and a number of criticisms of those analyses are addressed. This article confirms earlier findings that business-assistance living...

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities...

Living wage ordinances typically mandate that businesses under contract with a city or, in some cases, receiving assistance from a city, must pay their workers a wage sufficient to support a family financially. We estimate the effects of these ordinances on wages, hours, and employment in cities...

Many features of living wage laws may influence the strength of their effects on wages and employment of low-skill individuals. Echoing past research, business assistance living wage laws generate stronger wage increases and employment reductions than contractor-only laws. But broader...

Nearly 100 cities and local governments in the United States have passed living wage laws since the mid-1990s. Although the central goal of living wages is to reduce poverty, they may fail to do so because of disemployment effects. We summarize and critique the existing research on the effects...

This paper explores the effects of living wages on low-wage workers and low-income families. First, we update our earlier analyses, using data for 1996-2002, and address a number of criticisms of those analyses. We confirm our earlier findings that business assistance living wage laws boost...