Does increasing the minimum wage reduce poverty in developing countries?

Thomas (Tim) Gindling

IZA World of Labor, 2014, No 30, 30

Abstract: Do minimum wage policies reduce poverty in developing countries? It depends. Raising the minimum wage could increase or decrease poverty, depending on labor market characteristics. Minimum wages target formal sector workers—a minority of workers in most developing countries—many of whom do not live in poor households. Whether raising minimum wages reduces poverty depends not only on whether formal sector workers lose jobs as a result, but also on whether low-wage workers live in poor households, how widely minimum wages are enforced, how minimum wages affect informal workers, and whether social safety nets are in place.

Keywords: minimum wages; developing countries; poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 J31 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/does-increasing-the-mi ... ping-countries-1.pdf (application/pdf)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/does-increasing-the-mi ... developing-countries (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does increasing the minimum wage reduce poverty in developing countries? (2018)
Journal Article: Does increasing the minimum wage reduce poverty in developing countries?
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:iza:izawol:journl:y:2014:n:30

Access Statistics for this article

IZA World of Labor is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc

More articles in IZA World of Labor from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ().