Should the minimum wage be increased? Depending on which expert you ask, raising the minimum wage (now $5.15 an hour) will help or hurt low-income workers.

• Author: Pollin, Robert
• Position: Debate

YES

The main purpose of minimum wage laws is simple: to ensure that working people do not have to raise their families in poverty. But what you can buy with a minimum-wage income has fallen precipitously in the U.S. Today's $5.15 minimum wage buys about 40 percent less than what a minimum-wage income bought in 1968.

Someone working full-time at $5.15 per hour earns $10,712 a year--27 percent less than the official poverty level of $14,680 for a family of three. Families living at even twice the poverty line often experience serious hardships, such as missing meals.

The collapse of the minimum wage has generated a widespread "living wage" movement in the U.S., and more than 120 communities have passed laws to significantly raise local minimum wages in recent years.

Business groups oppose a higher minimum wage because it brings higher costs. But the increases are small; most are passed on to consumers through slightly higher prices. For example, I estimate that an average restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., would have had to raise the price of a $10 meal to $10.30 to cover the cost of the city's increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $8.50 this year.

Opponents also say a higher minimum wage will result in layoffs, but researchers consistently find that it has little, if any, negative effect on jobs.

Raising the minimum wage will therefore help low-income families, while its costs will be barely noticed by everyone else.

--Robert Pollin

Professor of Economics

University of Massachusetts

Amherst

NO

Many people think that raising the minimum wage will help single parents struggling to raise a family. But according to U.S. Census data, only one in seven people earning the minimum wage fits that description. The biggest group--41 percent--of people earning the minimum wage...