Hiking Minimum Wage an Inefficient Tool to Fight Poverty: Research

Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale, NBC News reported.

David Neumark, visiting scholar at the San Francisco Fed, contends in the paper that raising the minimum wage has only limited benefits in the war against poverty, due in part because relatively few of those falling below the poverty line actually receive the wage. 

But, according to Paul Sohn, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, a NELP study shows "the bulk of rigorous minimum wage studies show instead that raising the minimum wage boosts incomes for low-wage workers with only very small adverse impacts on employment."
 

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