LogFAQs > #950787491

In addition to this one case study, economists find general evidence of these kinds of ripple effects from raising the U.S. minimum wage. The best estimates, though, appear in research conducted by economists David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alan Manning of the London School of Economics, and Christopher Smith of the Federal Reserve Board. They study all state and federal minimum wage increases from 1979 through 2012, and measure the effect of the raises at each point of the wage distribution.

The authors find that the sharpest wage increases due to raising the minimum wage occur for workers at the bottom five percent of the wage scale, where U.S. minimum-wage workers are most likely to be concentrated. A ten percent increase in the minimum wage raises that 5th percentile wage by about 2.9 percent. The study also finds evidence of ripple effects as the minimum wage increases wages for workers who make more than the minimumand that these ripple effects dissipate the further one moves up the wage ladder. The same ten percent minimum wage increase raises the wages of workers at the 10th percentile of wages by about 1.6 percent and raises the wages of those in the 20th percentile by a statistically significant 0.7 percent. After the 25th percentile, wage effects are typically very small and statistically indistinguishable from zero.

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