IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/9808007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

State Type and Congressional Voting on the Minimum Wage

Author

Listed:
  • Oren M. Levin-Waldman

    (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute)

Abstract

How members of Congress vote on increases in the minimum wage is a function of several factors, most notably party affiliation and constituent interest. But also among those factors is the existence of "right-to-work" laws in the representative's state and the presence of labor unions, especially as they represent a voting constituency. This paper examines congressional voting patterns on the minimum wage from 1949, when the first vote to increase the wage occurred, to 1996, when the last vote occurred, and finds a relationship between union strength and positive voting, a relationship between "right-to-work" states and negative voting, and a decline in the significance of unions as a factor affecting congressional voting as unionism had declined.

Suggested Citation

  • Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1998. "State Type and Congressional Voting on the Minimum Wage," Macroeconomics 9808007, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Sep 1998.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9808007
    Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC - PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 33; figures: included
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mac/papers/9808/9808007.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert E. Prasch, 1996. "In Defense of the Minimum Wage," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2), pages 391-397, June.
    2. Meyer, Robert H & Wise, David A, 1983. "The Effects of the Minimum Wage on the Employment and Earnings of Youth," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 66-100, January.
    3. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1998. "Exploring the Politics of the Minimum Wage," Macroeconomics 9805010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. finis-welch, 1978. "Minimum Wages: Issues and Evidence," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 921141, September.
    5. James B. Kau & Donald Keenan & Paul H. Rubin, 1982. "A General Equilibrium Model of Congressional Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(2), pages 271-293.
    6. Kosters, Marvin & Welch, Finis, 1972. "The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Changes in Aggregate Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(3), pages 323-332, June.
    7. David Neumark & William Wascher, 1992. "Employment Effects of Minimum and Subminimum Wages: Panel Data on State Minimum Wage Laws," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 46(1), pages 55-81, October.
    8. Richard V. Burkhauser & T. Aldrich Finegan, 1989. "The minimum wage and the poor: The end of a relationship," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 53-71.
    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. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1998. "State Type and Congressional Voting on the Minimum Wage," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_243, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1999. "The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure: Implications for Income Distribution," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_267, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Oren Levin-Waldman, 1999. "The Minimum Wage and Regional Wage Structure: Implications for Income Distribution," Macroeconomics 9904004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1998. "Exploring the Politics of the Minimum Wage," Macroeconomics 9805010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1996. "Exploring the Politics of the Minimum Wage," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_176, Levy Economics Institute.
    6. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, "undated". "Do Institutions Affect the Wage Structure? Right-to-Work Laws, Unionization, and the Minimum Wage," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_57, Levy Economics Institute.
    7. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2101-2163 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1998. "Linking the Minimum Wage to Productivity," Macroeconomics 9802015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1997. "Linking the Minimum Wage to Productivity," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_219, Levy Economics Institute.
    10. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, 1999. "The Rhetorical Evolution of the Minimum Wage," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_280, Levy Economics Institute.
    11. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, "undated". "The Minimum Wage Can Be Raised: Lessons from the 1999 Levy Institute Survey of Small Business," Economics Policy Note Archive 99-6, Levy Economics Institute.
    12. Oren M. Levin-Waldman & George W. McCarthy, "undated". "Small Business and the Minimum Wage," Economics Policy Note Archive 98-3, Levy Economics Institute.
    13. Oren Levin-Waldman, 2000. "The Rhetorical Evolution of the Minimum Wage," Macroeconomics 0004027, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Dickens, Richard & Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan, 1998. "Estimating the effect of minimum wages on employment from the distribution of wages: A critical view," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 109-134, June.
    15. Chaplin, Duncan D. & Turner, Mark D. & Pape, Andreas D., 2003. "Minimum wages and school enrollment of teenagers: a look at the 1990's," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 11-21, February.
    16. Arindrajit Dube & Attila S. Lindner, 2024. "Minimum Wages in the 21st Century," NBER Working Papers 32878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Golan, Amos & Perloff, Jeffrey M. & Wu, Ximing, 2001. "Welfare Effects of Minimum Wage and Other Government Policies," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt36r7v1cr, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    18. Oren M. Levin-Waldman, "undated". "Automatic Adjustment of the Minimum Wage, Linking the Minimum Wage to Productivity," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_42, Levy Economics Institute.
    19. Jellal, Mohamed, 2012. "Maroc salaire minimum emploi et pauvreté [Morocco minimum wage employment and poverty]," MPRA Paper 38491, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. David Holland & Sanjoy Bhattacharjee & Leroy Stodick, 2006. "Assessing the Economic Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on the Washington Economy: A General Equilibrium Approach," Working Papers 2006-12, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    21. Daniel B. Klein & Stewart Dompe, 2007. "Reasons for Supporting the Minimum Wage: Asking Signatories of the "Raise the Minimum Wage" Statement," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(1), pages 125-167, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wpa:wuwpma:9808007. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.