IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uwarer/269404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of the Introduction of the UK Minimum Wage on the Employment Probabilities of Low Wage Workers

Author

Listed:
  • Stewart, Mark B.

Abstract

This paper uses longitudinal data from three contrasting datasets (matched Labour Force Surveys, the British Household Panel Survey and matched New Earnings Surveys) to estimate the impact of the introduction of the UK minimum wage (in April 1999) on the probability of subsequent employment among those whose wages would have needed to be raised to comply with the minimum. A difference-indifferences estimator is used, based on position in the wage distribution. No significant adverse employment effects are found for any of the four demographic groups considered (adult and youth, men and women) or in any of the three datasets used.

Suggested Citation

  • Stewart, Mark B., 2002. "The Impact of the Introduction of the UK Minimum Wage on the Employment Probabilities of Low Wage Workers," Economic Research Papers 269404, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:uwarer:269404
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269404/files/twerp630.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269404/files/twerp630.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.269404?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Janet Currie & Bruce C. Fallick, 1996. "The Minimum Wage and the Employment of Youth Evidence from the NLSY," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 404-428.
    2. Brown, Charles & Gilroy, Curtis & Kohen, Andrew, 1982. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 487-528, June.
    3. Richard Blundell & Alan Duncan & Costas Meghir, 1998. "Estimating Labor Supply Responses Using Tax Reforms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 827-862, July.
    4. Linneman, Peter, 1982. "The Economic Impacts of Minimum Wage Laws: A New Look at an Old Question," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 443-469, June.
    5. Metcalf, David, 1999. "The Low Pay Commission and the National Minimum Wage," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(453), pages 46-66, February.
    6. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    7. Heckman, James J. & Robb, Richard Jr., 1985. "Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions : An overview," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 239-267.
    8. Mark B. Stewart, 2002. "The Inter-related Dynamics of Unemployment and Low Pay," 10th International Conference on Panel Data, Berlin, July 5-6, 2002 B2-4, International Conferences on Panel Data.
    9. Angrist, Joshua D. & Krueger, Alan B., 1999. "Empirical strategies in labor economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1277-1366, Elsevier.
    10. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    11. Kim, Taeil & Taylor, Lowell J, 1995. "The Employment Effect in Retail Trade of California's 1988 Minimum Wage Increase," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 175-182, April.
    12. William Wascher & David Neumark, 2000. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1362-1396, December.
    13. Dickens, Richard & Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan, 1999. "The Effects of Minimum Wages on Employment: Theory and Evidence from Britain," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 1-22, January.
    14. Abowd, John M. & Kramarz, Francis & Margolis, David N. & Philippon, Thomas, 2000. "The Tail of Two Countries: Minimum Wages and Employment in France and the United States," IZA Discussion Papers 203, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Brown, Charles, 1999. "Minimum wages, employment, and the distribution of income," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 32, pages 2101-2163, Elsevier.
    16. Burkhauser, Richard V & Couch, Kenneth A & Wittenburg, David C, 2000. "A Reassessment of the New Economics of the Minimum Wage Literature with Monthly Data from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(4), pages 653-680, October.
    17. Alan B. Krueger & David Card, 2000. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1397-1420, December.
    18. Stephen Machin & Alan Manning, 1994. "The Effects of Minimum Wages on Wage Dispersion and Employment: Evidence from the U.K. Wages Councils," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(2), pages 319-329, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lemos, Sara, 2004. "A Menu of Minimum Wage Variables for Evaluating Wages and Employment Effects: Evidence from Brazil," IZA Discussion Papers 1069, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Pedro Portugal & Ana Rute Cardoso, 2006. "Disentangling the Minimum Wage Puzzle: An Analysis of Worker Accessions and Separations," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(5), pages 988-1013, September.
    3. Lemos Sara, 2005. "Political Variables as Instruments for the Minimum Wage," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-31, December.
    4. Arindrajit Dube & Attila Lindner, 2024. "Minimum Wages in the 21st Century," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2524, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    5. Mark B. Stewart, 2002. "Estimating the Impact of the Minimum Wage Using Geographical Wage Variation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 64(supplemen), pages 583-605, December.
    6. David Neumark & William Wascher, 2006. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Review of Evidence from the New Minimum Wage Research," NBER Working Papers 12663, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Möller, Joachim & König, Marion, 2008. "Mindestlohneffekte des Entsendegesetzes? : eine Mikrodatenanalyse für die deutsche Bauwirtschaft (Minimum wage effects of the worker posting law? : a micro data analysis for the German construction se," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 327-346.
    8. Sara Wong, 2017. "Minimum wage impacts on wages and hours worked of low-income workers in Ecuador," Working Papers PMMA 2017-14, PEP-PMMA.
    9. Mark B. Stewart & Joanna K. Swaffield, 2008. "The Other Margin: Do Minimum Wages Cause Working Hours Adjustments for Low‐Wage Workers?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(297), pages 148-167, February.
    10. Tomas Kucera, 2020. "Are Employment Effects of Minimum Wage the Same Across the EU? A Meta-Regression Analysis," Working Papers IES 2020/2, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jan 2020.
    11. König, Marion & Möller, Joachim, 2007. "Mindestlohneffekte des Entsendegesetzes? : eine Mikrodatenanalyse für die deutsche Bauwirtschaft (Minimum wage effects of the worker posting law? : a micro data analysis for the German construction se," IAB-Discussion Paper 200730, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    12. David Neumark & Peter Shirley, 2022. "Myth or measurement: What does the new minimum wage research say about minimum wages and job loss in the United States?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 384-417, October.
    13. Bodo Aretz & Melanie Arntz & Terry Gregory, 2013. "The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 14(3), pages 282-315, August.
    14. Möller, Joachim & König, Marion, 2008. "Mindestlohneffekte des Entsendegesetzes? : eine Mikrodatenanalyse für die deutsche Bauwirtschaft (Minimum wage effects of the worker posting law? : a micro data analysis for the German construction se," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 327-346.
    15. Möller, Joachim & König, Marion, 2008. "Mindestlohneffekte des Entsendegesetzes? : eine Mikrodatenanalyse für die deutsche Bauwirtschaft (Minimum wage effects of the worker posting law? : a micro data analysis for the German construction se," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 327-346.
    16. Christian Ragacs, 2003. "Mindestlöhne und Beschäftigung: Ein Überblick über die neuere empirische Literatur," Working Papers geewp25, Vienna University of Economics and Business Research Group: Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness.
    17. Dean Hyslop & Steven Stillman, 2004. "Youth Minimum Wage Reform and the Labour Market," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/03, New Zealand Treasury.
    18. Sara Lemos, 2004. "Are Wage and Employment Effects Robust to Alternative Minimum Wage Variables?," Discussion Papers in Economics 04/4, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    19. Larry D. Singell & James R. Terborg, 2007. "Employment Effects Of Two Northwest Minimum Wage Initiatives," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(1), pages 40-55, January.
    20. Zsófia L. Bárány, 2016. "The Minimum Wage and Inequality: The Effects of Education and Technology," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 237-274.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial Economics; Labor and Human Capital;

    JEL classification:

    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uwarer:269404. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.