Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate Using Univariate Regressions

This paper finds an insignificant negative correlation between youth employment and minimum wages for the panel of U.S. states, 1976-2015. Such a correlation is not observed in earlier panels. The source of the new results is traced to the greatest decline in employment-population ratio since the 19...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Xue, Bai
Format: Others
Published: Scholarship @ Claremont 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1355
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2447&context=cmc_theses
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Summary:This paper finds an insignificant negative correlation between youth employment and minimum wages for the panel of U.S. states, 1976-2015. Such a correlation is not observed in earlier panels. The source of the new results is traced to the greatest decline in employment-population ratio since the 1970s emerging during the financial crisis of 2008. Moreover, I discuss the likely causes of the recent sharp decline in employment-population ratio and propose that more factors should be taken into account when examining the effect of the minimum wage policy.