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Prior surveys of empirical research on the minimum wage have been organized around the question “What does the minimum wage affect?” This survey is organized around the question “Who is affected by the minimum wage?” We review the consequences of the minimum wage for teens and young workers, men and women, African Americans and Hispanics, the less educated, workers in low‐wage industries, and low‐wage/low‐income populations. Although there is almost universal agreement that the minimum wage boosts earnings, evidence for a negative employment effect varies between mixed and nonexistent. An important gap in the literature is the paucity of research on low‐wage/low‐income groups.

Statistical analysis of the minimum wage and employment has been very active for the last quarter century, including more than 37 studies of US data since the December 2000 AER exchange involving Card, Krueger, Neumark and Wascher. In this meta‐analysis of the 37 that report results suitable for this technique, the most important finding is a considerable shift toward the origin in the ‘consensus range’: from the interval [−0.3, −0.1] to [−0.13, −0.07]. The minimum wage has negative employment effects, but these have become notably smaller and are largely localized to teenagers.

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