TY - JOUR AU - Neumark,David AU - Schweitzer,Mark AU - Wascher,William TI - The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Family Incomes: A Non-Parametric Analysis JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 6536 PY - 1998 Y2 - April 1998 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6536 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6536.pdf N1 - Author contact info: David Neumark Department of Economics University of California at Irvine 3151 Social Science Plaza Irvine, CA 92697 Tel: 949-824-8496 Fax: 949/824-2182 E-Mail: dneumark@uci.edu Mark Schweitzer Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Research Department P.O. Box 6387 Cleveland, OH 44101-1387 Tel: 216-579-2014 Fax: 216-579-3050 E-Mail: Mark.Schweitzer@clev.frb.org William Wascher Federal Reserve Board Stop 66 Washington, DC 20551 Tel: 202/452-2812 Fax: 202/452-5296 E-Mail: william.l.wascher@frb.gov AB - The primary goal of a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor or near-poor families with members in the work force. However, estimates of employment effects of minimum wages tell us relatively little about whether minimum wages are likely to achieve this goal; even if the disemployment effects of minimum wages are modest, minimum wage increases could result in net income losses for poor and low-income families. In this paper, we present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes from matched March CPS surveys. Using non-parametric estimates of the distributions of family income relative to needs in states and years with an without minimum wage increases, we examine the effects of minimum wages on this distribution, and on the distribution of the changes in income that families experience. Although minimum wages do increase the incomes of some poor families, the evidence indicates that the overall effects are to increase the proportion of families that are poor and near-poor, and to decrease the proportion of families with incomes between 1.5 and 3 times the poverty level. ER -