The Origins and Early Impact of the Minimum Wage in Agriculture

Robin Gowers and Timothy Hatton ()

No 1021, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines the effects on wages and employment of the minimum wage in agriculture in the United Kingdom during the interwar period. We find that the impact of regulation was to raise the wage for agricultural labourers by 13% when it was (re)introduced in 1924, by 15% in the late 1920s, and by more than 20% in the 1930s. The effect on farm employment was to reduce it by about 54,000 (6.5%) in 1929 up to a peak of 97,000 (13.3%) in 1937. The minimum wage lifted many families of farm labourers who remained employed out of poverty, but it significantly lowered the incomes of farmers, particularly during the 1930s.

Keywords: Agriculture; Minimum Wage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J43 N34 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Origins and Early Impact of the Minimum Wage in Agriculture (1997)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1021

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1021

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().