Volume 18, Number 1 (Winter) 1983
Brown, Charles, Curtis Gilroy, and Andrew Kohen. 1983. "Time-Series Evidence of the Effect of the Minimum Wage on Youth Employment and Unemployment." Journal of Human Resources 18(1): 3-31.
Our updated estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in the federal minimum wage (or the coverage rate) would reduce teenage (16-19) employment by about 1 percent, which is at the lower end of the range of estimates from previous studies. Because of substantial labor force withdrawal, the unemployment effects are practically zero. These minimum wage effects differ very little by sex, and there is no strong evidence that the effects vary by race. The study also finds a significant-albeit small-unemployment impact for young adults (20-24) and examines the consequences of numerous alternative statistical and mathematical specifications of the estimating model.
Brown and Kohen are Associate Professors of Economics at the University of
Maryland and James Madison University, respectively. Gilroy is an economist with
the U.S. Army Research Institute.
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the official position of the institutions with which they
are affiliated. We benefited from the comments of Jacob Mincer, Finis Welch, and
an anonymous referee on earlier versions of the paper, and from the assistance
of John Stinson in obtaining the data. Ann Levin and Nancy Zeitler provided
helpful research assistance.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X