Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Hoover | Institution Stanford University
David Neumark, Hoover visiting fellow and distinguished professor of economics and codirector of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy at the University of California–Irvine discussed “Do Minimum Wages Reduce Job Opportunities for Blacks?” a paper with Jyotsana Kala (UC Irvine).
PARTICIPANTS
David Neumark, John Taylor, David Brady, John Cochrane, Chris Dauer, Steve Davis, Sami Diaf, Nick Gebbia, Bob Hall, Nick Hope, Ken Judd, Jyotsana Kala, Evan Koenig, Jeff Lacker, David Laidler, Ross Levine, Jacob Light, John Lipsky, Justin Matejka, Brendan Moore, Elena Pastorino, Paul Peterson, Milan Quentel, Valerie Ramey, Stephen Redding, Abraham Sofaer, Jack Tatom, Yevgeniy Teryoshin, Marc Weidenmier, Alex Zentefis
ISSUES DISCUSSED
David Neumark, Hoover visiting fellow and distinguished professor of economics and codirector of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy at the University of California–Irvine discussed “Do Minimum Wages Reduce Job Opportunities for Blacks?” a paper with Jyotsana Kala (UC Irvine).
John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, was the moderator.
PAPER SUMMARY
We provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of minimum wages on blacks, and on the relative impacts on blacks vs. whites. We study not only teenagers – the focus of much of the minimum wage-employment literature – but also other low-skill groups. We focus primarily on employment, which has been the prime concern with the minimum wage research literature. We find evidence that job loss effects from higher minimum wages are much more evident for blacks, and in contrast not very detectable for whites, and are often large enough to generate adverse effects on earnings. We supplement this work with additional analysis that distinguishes between effects of an individual’s race and the race composition of where they live. The extensive residential segregation by race in the United States raises the question of whether the more adverse effects of minimum wages on blacks are attributable to more adverse effects on black individuals, or more adverse effects on neighborhoods with large black populations. We find relatively little evidence of heterogeneity in effects across areas defined by the share black among residents.
To read the paper, click the following link
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33167/w33167.pdf
To read the slides, click click the following link
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/2024-12/Neumark%20Seminar%20Hoover.pdf
