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…
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…
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…
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…
January 1993
Considerable political attention has been focused recently on the claim that a large and growing segment of the U.S. population, particularly the “working poor,” has inadequate access to health care. Among the many policies that have been advocated to remedy this situation, one of the most widely discussed is a proposal to require that private firms provide health insurance for all of their employees. The…