NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

The Economic Effects of Living Wage Laws: A Provisional Review

use a mirror
Use a mirror

download in pdf format
   (694 K)

email paper

Scott Adams, David Neumark

NBER Working Paper No. 10562
Issued in June 2004
NBER Program(s):   LS

Nearly 100 cities and local governments in the United States passed living wage laws since the mid-1990s. The central goal of living wages is to reduce poverty, yet they may fail to do so because of disemployment effects. We summarize and critique the existing research on the effects of living wages on wages, employment, and family income, emphasizing common findings, points of disagreement, and important questions for future research. The evidence thus far points to wage increases as well as employment losses for the least-skilled although there is disagreement about the employment effects but on net some beneficial distributional effects. The evidence also points to efficiency wage-type effects of living wage laws that may offset some of the adverse impacts on employers.

Published: Adams, Scott and David Neumark. "Living Wage Effects: New And Improved Evidence," Economic Development Quarterly, 2005, v19(1,Feb), , 80-102.

This paper is available as PDF (694 K) or via email.

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
Data
People
About

Support
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us