The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912-1968

Price Fishback and Andrew Seltzer ()
Additional contact information
Andrew Seltzer: Royal Holloway, University of London

No 12973, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Minimum wages have been among the most controversial government interventions in labor markets. There have been several waves of minimum wage activity over the past century, beginning with a 1912 Massachusetts law. Since 1938 minimum wages in the United States have been set by a complex array of federal and state laws, with state laws sometimes exceeding the national law and closing important coverage gaps. Between 1938 and 1968, the real value of the federal minimum wage was generally increasing. Coverage gaps continued to be closed by amendments to federal legislation into the 1970s. In the 1980s, the real minimum rate declined sharply, and has since this time never again reached the level of 1955-1980. In this paper we examine the political economy of early minimum wage laws, focussing on the role of interest groups, politicians, courts, economists, and the general public.

Keywords: political economy; minimum wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J88 N32 N42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lab and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2021, 35 (1), 73 - 96

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12973.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912–1968 (2021)
Working Paper: The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912-1968 (2020)
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:izadps:dp12973

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers 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 Holger Hinte ().