SOURCE - living wage study - Brief Article

Reason, Oct, 2001

The movement for "living wage" laws--that's a minimum wage, plus insurance and other benefits-is gaining force with 75 hotly debated campaigns currently underway (see the map at www.livingwageresearch.org). Debates often hang on whether such mandates take jobs away from the poorest and least-skilled workers.

Two Stanford researchers are trying to push the discussion further by studying a mathematical model in which both unemployment and profit margins stay steady after implementing a living wage on federal and state levels. The main findings drive home well-known truths: "Raising minimum wages poorly targets the poor," and "virtually as much money goes to the highest-income families as to the lowest." The study, "Winners and Losers of Federal and State Minimum Wages,"