Poor policy.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Minimum wage folly - Democratic Party's minimum wage policy - Brief article

THE DEMOCRATIC Party's 2012 platform promises to "raise the minimum wage" from $7.25 to $9.50 per hour and "index it to inflation." This plank appears in the section of the platform devoted to "poverty." But does raising the minimum wage actually reduce poverty? A study in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Labor Research suggests it does not.

The authors--Michele Campolieti, Morley Gunderson, and Byron Lee, economists affiliated with the University of Toronto and China's Renmin University Business School--note that the demographics of workers who earn the minimum wage make it an ineffective tool for reducing poverty. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that nearly all minimum-wage workers are teenagers, college students, or secondary earners...