The Case of the Minimum Wage

Places contemporary minimum wage debates in historical context, stressing the importance of political as opposed to economic variables.

This book traces the historical evolution of minimum-wage policy and explains how models are used (and misused) by different interests to achieve their particular aims. Minimum-wage policy was initially legitimated as a broader labor-market policy aimed at achieving greater productivity and labor-market stability. As organized labor has declined as a political force in the last twenty years, the nature of the debate has metamorphized into a narrowly focused and often highly technical discussion concerned with specific effects of given specific increases in the minimum wage, such as either relieving poverty or the so-called adverse effects on youth unemployment. This change has coincided with the greatest stagnation of the minimum wage.