Velika skupina uglednih progresivnih ameriških ekonomistov (med njimi so tudi Acemoglu, Arrow, Rodrik, Solow itd.) je naslovila peticijo na ameriški Kongres za postopni dvig minimalne plače (v treh letih za približno četrtino). Peticija je posledica povečane neenakosti v ZDA, kjer visoka rast v zadnjih treh desetletjih ni našla poti navzdol (ni bilo trickle-down učinka) do tistih z najnižjimi plačami. Peticija:

July will mark five years since the federal minimum wage was last raised. We urge you to act now and enact a three-step raise of 95 cents a year for three years—which would mean a minimum wage of $10.10 by 2016—and then index it to protect against inflation. Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller have introduced legislation to accomplish this. The increase to $10.10 would mean that minimum-wage workers who work full time, full year would see a raise from their current salary of roughly $15,000 to roughly $21,000. These proposals also usefully raise the tipped minimum wage to 70% of the regular minimum.

This policy would directly provide higher wages for close to 17 million workers by 2016. Furthermore, another 11 million workers whose wages are just above the new minimum would likely see a wage increase through “spillover” effects, as employers adjust their internal wage ladders. The vast majority of employees who would benefit are adults in working families, disproportionately women, who work at least 20 hours a week and depend on these earnings to make ends meet. At a time when persistent high unemployment is putting enormous downward pressure on wages, such a minimum-wage increase would provide a much-needed boost to the earnings of low-wage workers.

In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front.

Povzetek oziroma meta analizo študij o učinkih povišanja minimalne plače na zmanjšanje revščine v ZDA je pripravil Arindrajit Dube. Dube ugotavlja, da je glavnina študij med obema našla negativno povezavo, in sicer dvig minimalne plače za 10% v povprečju zniža revščino za 0.2% (poudarjam, da to velja za ZDA):

If we take an “average of averages” of the poverty rate elasticities across all 12 studies, while (1) weighting each study equally, and (2) weighting each specification and group within study equally as well, we also obtain an elasticity of -0.15. If we exclude Neumark et al. (2005), the “average of averages” across the 11 studies is -0.20. There are, of course, other ways of aggregating estimates across studies. However, when I consider the set of nearly all available estimates of the effect of minimum wages on poverty, the weight of the evidence suggests that minimum wages tend to have a small to moderate sized impact in reducing poverty. [Below, I also plot histograms of all 58 elasticities—both unweighted, as well as weighted by the inverse of the number of estimates in each of the 12 studies, so that each study is weighted equally.]

Vir: Arindrajit Dube