EPI Research (Page 27 )

  • The Consequences of Indexing the Minimum Wage to Average Wages in the U.S. Economy

    May 1995

    Two consistent themes have echoed throughout the current debate over the future of the minimum wage: minimum-wage workers today have been left behind by the overall growth in wages; and, mandated wage increases are desirable because most minimum wage workers are adults and have families to support. Both of these assertions are based on simplistic views of the workforce. Neither stands up to close scrutiny,…

  • Jobs Taken by Mothers Moving From Welfare to Work: And the Effects of Minimum Wages on this Transition

    February 1995

    Raising the earnings of welfare recipients, primarily women attempting to move into the workforce, remains the chief obstacle in reforming the welfare system. One widely discussed option has been to raise the minimum wage. Advocates of higher minimum wages call for an increase in order to make work more attractive and create sufficient monetary incentive for individuals to leave the welfare system and move into…

  • Minimum Wage Laws and the Distribution of Employment

    January 1995

    The desirability of raising the minimum wage has long revolved around just one question: the effect of higher minimum wages on the overall level of employment. This report adds an important new dimension to that debate by showing that an even more critical effect of the minimum wage rests on the composition of employment — who gets the minimum wage job.

    Kevin Lang’s paper focuses…

  • Mandates in Employment: A History of Added Burdens on the Unskilled

    August 1994

    University of Massachusetts, Amherst economist Simon Rottenberg’s examination of mandates in employment in employment is a stark reminder of the potentially devastating effects of mandated employer-provided health insurance. Commissioned by the Employment Policies Institute, the study not only points out the difference among various occupational categories but explains how these factors determine differences in the size and composition of compensation packages. In the context of…

  • Labor Demand Elasticities and Clinton Health Care Reform

    July 1994

    At a White House press conference in October of 1993, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, released a paper criticizing estimates of job losses from employer mandates to pay for health care reform.1

    A specific target of their criticism was a study—The Impact of a Health insurance Mandate on Labor Costs and Employment—carried out by…

  • The Impact of a Health Insurance Mandate on Labor Costs and Employment

    September 1993

    Speaking to the American Hospital Association in August 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton question why companies that do not provide health insurance to their employees should be allowed to “get what amounts to a free ride.”

    With these words Mrs. Clinton—who has well learned the inner workings and flaws of the nation’s health care system—indicated that she had no idea at all of how health care…