EPI Research (Page 13 )

  • The Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on Single Mothers

    September 2007

    Advocates of federal and state minimum wage increases often cite poor single mothers as a target population for minimum wage protection. However, the empirical evidence shows that most minimum wage workers are neither single mothers nor poor. In fact, poor single mothers comprise less than 5 percent of all minimum wage workers, and almost 55 percent already earn wage rates greater than $7.25 per hour,…

  • 2007 EPI Minimum Wage Survey of Labor Economists

    July 2007

    The 2007 Minimum Wage Survey was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center for the Employment Policies Institute from January to April, 2007. A similar survey on Living Wages was conducted in 2000. Two hundred eighty (280) labor economists in the United States completed mail questionnaires for the survey. A list of economists was obtained from the American Economic Association (AEA) and consisted…

  • Comparing The Effects Of Health Insurance Reform Proposals: Employer Mandates, Medicaid Expansions, and Tax Credits

    February 2007

    Overview

    Over 46 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2005. This problem has increasingly drawn the attention of policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. Attempts to increase health coverage have generally focused on three main types of policy proposals: mandating employer-paid health insurance, providing tax credits for low-income individuals to buy insurance, and expanding Medicaid to cover more of the uninsured. While many…

  • Minimum Wage Effects in the Post-welfare Reform Era

    January 2007

    Overview

    Minimum wage laws remain a subject of considerable debate at all levels of government despite years of research on their costs and benefits. At the national level, there have been frequent proposals in recent years to increase the federal minimum wage. Many states have followed suit, attempting (and sometimes succeeding) to raise their minimum wages above the federal level. At the present time,…

  • The Effects of the Proposed Arizona Minimum Wage Increase

    September 2006

    The minimum wage has become a favorite election-
    year issue at both the state and national
    levels, with many politicians arguing that a hike
    is needed to pull hardworking families out of
    poverty. Unfortunately, raising the minimum
    wage has unintended consequences, which often
    hurt the very people the hike was intended to
    help. Decades of research show that…

  • The Effects of the Proposed Missouri Minimum Wage Increase

    August 2006

    In recent years, the movement to increases minimum wage has been active in states across the country. Advocates of these wage hikes argue that the increases will help low-income families escape poverty. While this argument is emotionally compelling, it ignores the unintended consequences that the proposed increase would create—such as job loss among the most vulnerable employees and displacement of low-skilled adults by wealthy teens.…