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Despite considerable legislative and advocacy-based efforts to end subminimum wage practices, many Americans with disabilities are still paid below the federal minimum. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers holding certificates to pay less than minimum wage to individuals with disabilities whose work capacity or productivity is impaired due to disability. The majority of employers paying subminimum wages are facility-based programs also known as sheltered workshops. This work is usually performed in segregated settings away from the rest of the nation's workforce. Subminimum wage practices continue despite clear evidence that even those with the most significant disabilities can be successfully employed in competitive integrated employment when supports are provided. The purpose of this study was to examine the continued use of subminimum wages in the United States and to identify whether there are any state-level characteristics or policies that predict their use. Descriptive analysis and linear regression were used in this investigation. Findings indicate that subminimum wage practices continue to be prevalent in most states, and most prominently in the Midwest region. Implications and recommendations for reducing subminimum wage pay for individuals with disabilities are provided.

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the visibility of economic inequality and the inadequacy of current minimum wage laws in the United States. Changes in the minimum wage, a living wage, or just employment practices may be compelled by law or voluntarily enacted by employers. A literature search failed to yield a concise and practical tool to comprehensively assess existing just employment policies or practices in higher education institutions. This article describes the development of a concise and practical assessment based on the "Model Just Employment Policy" from the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. The resulting Just Employment Policy Assessment is used to evaluate the publicly available policies of four disparate higher education institutions in the United States. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for future research and administrative practice.

The authors of this article make a case for using Fink's (2013) taxonomy of significant learning in the economics classroom to improve standard-based economics education and to continue transforming the discipline to reduce social inequality along multiple dimensions, including gender, race, and class. Fink's framework is defined by student engagement with six distinct kinds of learning. Changes in student attitudes, changes in what students know about themselves and others, and learning how to learn in different settings are learning outcomes that are incorporated explicitly alongside acquiring new discipline-specific knowledge and skills. The authors apply Fink's taxonomy to a module on the minimum wage for principles of economics. They discuss potential activities and reflect on the benefits and challenges associated with using Fink's taxonomy.

Natural experiments are often used for answering research questions in which randomization is implausible. Effective recruitment strategies are well documented for observational cohort studies and clinical trials, unlike recruitment methods for time-sensitive natural experiments. In this time-sensitive study of the impact of a minimum wage policy, we aimed to recruit 900 low-wage workers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Raleigh, North Carolina. We present our recruitment strategies, challenges, and successes for participant screening and enrollment of a difficult-to-reach population.

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

Safety net programs emerging from the War on Poverty and later antipoverty efforts such as Head Start, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among others have reduced poverty, and strengthened longer-term outcomes for poor children, leading to better health and greater economic success into adulthood. Unfortunately, despite the strong positive effect of these public programs, the poverty rate is still too high, particularly among America's next generation of children and young adults. Struggling with economic insecurity is now a typical experience for America's next generation, with the overwhelming majority of low-income households with children consisting of at least one working adult. For many families, work is not enough to keep them out of poverty, especially due to decades of shrinking wages, lack of affordable child care, and too few opportunities to move up to a better job with higher wages. Even with modest assistance from public programs, millions of families still struggle with economic insecurity. We need to build on the success of the War on Poverty and target the new problems created by the low-wage labor market.

Secondary analysis of the UK's 2011/12 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey reveals that many existing assumptions about graduate internships are questionable. This article proposes a reliable way of estimating the true extent of internships including those reported as 'voluntary' jobs: hidden internships. In doing so the article finds: 1) At six months after graduation, internships are a small feature of the UK graduate labour market, but significant in certain sectors; 2) Unpaid internships are much more prevalent than previously estimated, especially in these same sectors; and 3) Contrary to some public policy debate, unpaid internships appear, on balance, to be a residual option more likely to lead to underemployment and less favourable career development outcomes. Post-graduation internships appear less likely than pre-graduation work experiences to confer long-term employability advantages.

This article argues that, although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is not presented as a jobs policy, the Act does function as a substitute for the creation of decently paying jobs for those who need them. Aimed particularly at the minority poor like its 1965 predecessor, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB acts as an anti-poverty program because it is based on an implicit assumption that increased educational achievement is the route out of poverty for low-income families and individuals. NCLB stands in the place of policies like job creation and significant raises in the minimum wage which--although considerably more expensive than standardized testing--would significantly decrease poverty in the United States. The authors demonstrate that there are significant economic realities, and existing public policies, that severely curtail the power of education to function as a route out of poverty for poor people. They contend that the weakened role of education in upward mobility vitiates any premise that better scores on achievement tests, and increased education, will secure for low-income folks the jobs and income they need.

In a knowledge market, the knowledge, skills and expertise needed for the economic and sociopolitical transformation of a nation and its citizens are transacted at different prices. Inequitable access to this market poses a serious threat to the economic welfare of the country and its citizens. The authors assess the extent of this threat with reference to university education in Nigeria and its implications for national development. Questionnaires were used to obtain data and, since this is a quantitative research study, the factors serving as the basis for analysis are as follows: the official minimum wage, poverty rates and the prices (fees) charged at the sampled universities. The findings reveal that more than 70% of the total population live on between US$3.70 and US$7.39 per day. In addition, the lowest fees charged at the public and private universities are Nigeria Naira N75,000 (US$477.71) and N400,000 (US$2547.77), respectively. Thus, there is not only a substantial difference in the prices charged, but university fees are also beyond the means of the majority of Nigerians. Identifying these university fees as the main cause of inequitable access to the knowledge market, the authors propose that the prices should be reduced to accommodate the impoverished majority and argue that the government should facilitate access to university education through student loans and public funding.

Much ink has been spilled debating the role of the intellectual. William Tierney's article "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Role of the Intellectual in Eliminating Poverty" in the August/September 2013 issue of "Educational Researcher" adds to this literature. In his article, Tierney presents recommendations to the education community on how we might help our students in poverty. While Tierney's recommendations are compelling, he frames his essay in a way that makes it difficult to understand why traditional education reform has failed to reach its ambitious goals. In this brief response to Tierney, I encourage our community to view the effects of poverty as two-dimensional when trying to craft and conduct educational reform.

The stratification system in India has resulted in the socioeconomic inequality in society and defines women domestic workers as one of the lowest segments of society. This qualitative and quantitative study aims at describing the problems of female domestic workers, the relationship of their employers with them, and exploring the impact of socioeconomic status mainly, occupation, education, and income on life satisfaction. We used ethnographic observation and in-depth interview over a 4 year period in Mysore (a city in the south of India). Furthermore, our quantitative research was guided by convenience sampling technique with selecting 125 (65 domestic workers, 60 employers). We prepared a structured questionnaire for gathering demographic information, i.e. age, education, marital status, occupation, and religion. To measure the degree of life satisfaction, we administered Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al. J Person Assess 49(1):71-75, 1985). The data were collected during September and October 2011. The hypotheses were tested by applying Pearson correlation, regression, and "t" test (SPSS, version 18). The results of our observation and interview indicate that domestic workers suffer from various problems inside and outside their homes. The relationship between domestic workers and employers is a master-servant relationship. Domestic workers remain as an unorganized job group though in 2004 the Karnataka Minimum Wage Act was passed. Our quantitative findings reveal that there is a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and life satisfaction. This type of study displays that enacting law is not sufficient; it necessitates implementing and monitoring properly. This study suggests measures for supporting female domestic workers.

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the United States, employers' violations of minimum wage, overtime and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable workers. Our findings suggest that in America's three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries and occupations, affecting a wide range of workers. But while worker characteristics are correlated with violations, job and employer characteristics play the stronger role, including industry, occupation and measures of informality and nonstandard work. We therefore propose a framework in which employers' noncompliance with labor regulations is one axis of a competitive strategy based on labor cost reduction, contributing to the reorganization of work and production in the 21st century labor market.

The concept of serving an apprenticeship as a means of training skilled workers dates to the Middle Ages. Apprenticeships in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance were typically seven years in duration, in order to ensure that the masters recouped their investment and that the apprentice was given sufficient time to become skilled and not simply exploited as cheap labor. The experience arguably imparted not only artisan skills, but also the tacit skills needed for professional success, such as informed intuition, judgment under pressure, ease with clients, and problem-solving abilities, skills that often improve with experience. Recently, however, the apprenticeship system is reemerging as a promising model for improving job skills, particularly in the "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics" (STEM) fields. Currently, numerous Web sites match prospective interns to prospective positions. While today apprenticeships are typically paid positions, unpaid internships also provide a vehicle for developing both tacit and job-related skills. This article examines the pedagogical, legal, and ethical issues concerning unpaid internships and their implication for business education for the student, the employer, and the educational institution. The recent enforcement efforts by the Labor Department against employers that illegally fail to pay interns makes this a particularly timely discussion to guide all parties involved in internships. (Contains 179 footnotes.)

This article presents a comparative analysis of the determinants of early school leaving (ESL) at the country level. We decompose ESL rates into two components: a "primary" rate reflecting unqualified school leaving from initial education, and a second component accounting for early school leavers who participate in training programmes. Both may be influenced by structural and policy determinants. We examine how the ESL rate is affected by macro-economic and social context variables such as GDP/capita, growth, poverty, and youth unemployment, as well as system characteristics of the education system (such as legal school leaving age, grade retention, early tracking, and size of vocational education) and the labour market and social protection systems (minimum wages, unemployment insurance).

Budget exercises are frequently used in introductory and social problems courses to facilitate student understanding of income inequality. But do these exercises actually lead to greater sociological understanding? To explore this issue, the authors studied undergraduate students enrolled in introductory sociology courses during the 2008-2009 academic year. Using a unique pretest-pretest-posttest design, the authors captured student perceptions of issues of socioeconomic inequality at the beginning of the course, after completion of a traditional unit on stratification, and after participation in a budget exercise. The unique study design allows the authors to examine if and how students make gains in understanding inequality sociologically. They also consider other learning objectives, including fostering an appreciation of obstacles to social mobility and increasing general knowledge about inequality. The results suggest that both budget exercises and a traditional pedagogical unit of lecture, reading, and discussion play limited roles in fostering at least short-term sociological understanding as related to these goals. (Contains 5 notes and 3 tables.)

The already limited vocational prospects of low-income African Americans in New Orleans were further devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill added to the devastation, highlighting the continued vulnerability of New Orleanians seeking employment. As a result, opportunities persist for vocational practitioners to lend their expertise. In this article, the post-Katrina vocational situation of low-income African American residents is conceptualized using Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological model. Furthermore, needed interventions are described at each level of this ecological model.

Many theories have been offered to explain why people are impoverished. This article by Karen Seccombe uses the case study of "Dee," a newly single mother, to explore four of the most common: individualism, social structuralism, the culture of poverty, and fatalism. She concludes that poverty is a highly complex phenomenon, and it is likely that many explanations come into play at the same time. It is experienced on the societal level, and as a personal, lived experience. (Contains 1 footnote.)

Does increasing the minimum wage reduce the high school completion rate? Previous research has suffered from (1. narrow time horizons, (2. potentially inadequate measures of states' high school completion rates, and (3. potentially inadequate measures of minimum wage rates. Overcoming each of these limitations, we analyze the impact of changes in state and federal minimum wage rates on state high school completion rates for the graduating classes of 1982 through 2005. Our state-level analyses, which consist of a series of state and year fixed-effects models with controls for state-year time-varying covariates, provide no support for the argument that increasing the minimum wage reduces rates of high school completion. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure, and 6 notes.)

Using store-level and aggregated Consumer Price Index data, we show that restaurant prices rise in response to minimum wage increases under several sources of identifying variation. We introduce a general model of employment determination that implies minimum wage hikes cause prices to rise in competitive labor markets but potentially fall in monopsonistic environments. Furthermore, the model implies employment and prices are always negatively related. Therefore, our empirical results provide evidence against the importance of monopsony power for understanding small observed employment responses to minimum wage changes. Our estimated price responses challenge other explanations of the small employment response, too. (Contains 3 tables, 3 figures and 42 footnotes.)

Using pooled cross-sectional data from the 1992 to 2005 March Current Population Survey (CPS), this study examines the relationship between minimum wage increases and the economic well-being of single mothers. Estimation results show that minimum wage increases were ineffective at reducing poverty among single mothers. Most working single mothers were not affected by minimum wage hikes because they already earned wages above state and federal minimum wages. And less-educated single mothers who were affected did not see a rise in net income because of negative employment and hours effects. For this low-skilled population, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage was associated with an 8.8 percent reduction in employment and an 11.8 percent reduction in annual hours worked. (Contains 6 tables and 19 footnotes.)

This paper empirically examines the impact of minimum wages on educational enrollments in New Zealand. A significant reform to the youth minimum wage since 2000 has resulted in some age groups undergoing a 91% rise in their real minimum wage over the last 10 years. Three panel least squares multivariate models are estimated from a national sample of nine age cohorts each year over 19 years. This allows analysis of the impact of increases in minimum wage over time and of the introduction of the minimum wage for teenagers in 1994. Our findings indicate that in New Zealand, changes to minimum wages appear to have an insignificant impact on the enrollment levels of 16-24 year olds and the subgroup of 20-24 year olds. In both cases, the standard errors are large making these results unclear. For the subgroup of 16-19 year olds, minimum wage rises have a statistically significant negative effect on enrollment levels. However, the introduction of the minimum wage appears to have had a significantly positive impact on teenagers' enrollment levels, a possible indication of the ineffective level the minimum wage was set at, in terms of reservation wages of youth in New Zealand.

In March 2006 the Industrial Relations Commissions of New South Wales and Queensland utilised their equal-remuneration wage-fixing principles to address the gender undervaluation of childcare work. In doing so the tribunals explicitly rejected employer arguments used in the past to limit increases in award rates of pay for childcare workers. While these decisions were thought to have a wide ranging impact on a significant area of feminised work, their influence is likely to be short-lived. The introduction of the Howard Government's new federal workplace relations system under the WorkChoices legislation provides employers with the opportunity to reargue the NSW and Queensland equal-remuneration cases. This opportunity is facilitated by the operation of the award "rationalisation" process and the determination of minimum wages and classification scales by the new Australian Fair Pay Commission. Some employers are utilising these opportunities to argue for cuts to the award wages of childcare workers, both in nominal and real terms. In this context it is difficult to conclude that the federal WorkChoices wage-fixing system is a fair system. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Exposure to minimum wages at young ages could lead to adverse longer-run effects via decreased labor market experience and tenure, and diminished education and training, while beneficial longer-run effects could arise if minimum wages increase skill acquisition. Evidence suggests that as individuals reach their late 20s, they earn less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage at younger ages, and the adverse longer-run effects are stronger for blacks. If there are such longer-run effects of minimum wages, they are likely more significant than the contemporaneous effects on youths that are the focus of research and policy debate. (Contains 6 tables and 8 footnotes.)

Although minimum wages are advocated as a policy that will help the poor, few studies have examined their effect on poor families. This paper uses variation in minimum wages across states and over time to estimate the impact of minimum wage legislation on welfare caseloads. We find that the elasticity of the welfare caseload with respect to the minimum wage is between 0.1 and 0.2, but this estimate is sensitive to the sample period and assumptions about state trends. We tentatively conclude that higher minimum wages increase welfare dependence; however, more research is warranted.

In this piece, Jean Anyon argues that the definition of education policy should be expanded to include the consideration of economic policies. She asserts that the impact of economic policies, such as minimum wage laws, have large and often ignored impacts on the experiences of urban students. Anyon argues that even small annual salary enhancements can have direct effects on the experiences of urban families living in poverty, and particularly on the educational experiences of children in those families. Ultimately, Anyon posits the need for the inclusion of economic policies under the rubric of educational policies as divorcing the two creates an artificial divide; one cannot hope to impact urban schools without first addressing the economic needs of the families who attend those schools.

Purpose: This paper reports on Canadian research that examined the cost effectiveness of home care for seniors as a substitute for long-term institutional services. Design and Methods: Two Canadian cities were included in the research: Victoria, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. The research computes the costs of formal care and informal care in both settings and ensures comparable groups of clients in both settings by comparing individuals at the same level of care. Results: The results reveal that costs were significantly lower for community clients than for facility clients, regardless of whether costs only to the government were taken into account or whether both formal and informal costs were taken into account. When informal caregiver time is valued at either minimum wage or replacement wage, there was a substantial jump in the average annual costs for both community and facility clients relative to when informal caregiver time was valued at zero. Implications: Nevertheless, the results reveal that home care is significantly less costly than residential care even when informal caregiver time is valued at replacement wage.

This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income. Not surprisingly, the evidence indicates that low-wage workers are most strongly affected, while higher-wage workers are little affected. Workers who initially earn near the minimum wage experience wage gains. Nevertheless, their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes on earned income suggests adverse consequences, on net, for low-wage workers.

Two key issues thrown up by the 1999 introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in the United Kingdom are its likely impact on employers' training practices in low paying sectors of the economy and the implications for skills. Based on a study of the hospitality industry, this article assesses the limited significance of the differential, "subminimum" NMW rates as devices for promoting skills development and considers the absence of any direct impact on training practices of the statutory floor of wages in general. The weaknesses of a policy framework dominated by a supply-side ethos in which the importance of incentives for employers to provide training and employment opportunities is prioritised, rather than one in which an opportunity is taken to use the NMW as part of a wider strategy to generate greater demand for skills in low-paying industries are attested.

Estimates the effects of higher minimum wages on school enrollment using the Common Core of Data. Controlling for local labor market conditions and state and year fixed effects, finds some evidence that higher minimum wages reduce teen school enrollment in states where students drop out before age 18. (23 references) (Author/PKP)

Examines the effects of minimum wage on schooling, seeking to reconcile some of the contradictory results in recent research using Current Population Survey data from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Findings point to negative effects of minimum wages on school enrollment, bolstering the findings of negative effects of minimum wages on enrollment from recent studies. (16 references) (Author/PKP)

Examines the restructuring of urban employment regimes through the lens of low-wage, temporary employment and its attendant social division of labor at the urban scale. Focuses on the ways in which a "regime of precarious employment" has been embedded within a regional growth model and describes emerging forms of labor market regulation associated with this employment regime. Contains an appendix on the estimated wages of homeless day laborers. (SM)

Canadian panel data 1988-90 were used to compare estimates of minimum-wage effects based on a low-wage/high-worker sample and a low-wage-only sample. Minimum-wage effect for the latter is nearly zero. Different results for low-wage subgroups suggest a significant effect for those with longer low-wage histories. (Contains 26 references.) (SK)

Most workers who begin their careers in minimum-wage jobs eventually gain more experience and move on to higher paying jobs. However, more than 8% of workers spend at least half of their first 10 working years in minimum wage jobs. Those more likely to have minimum wage careers are less educated, minorities, women with young children, and those outside urban areas. (SK)

Argues that the recent controversy over the effect of the minimum wage on employment offers an opportunity for teaching introductory economics. Examines eight textbooks to determine topic coverage but finds little consensus. Describes how minimum wage effects should be taught. (RLH)

Interviews with 150 working and 50 nonworking secondary and postsecondary students in Britain found that, although financial need was an initial motivation, working becomes habitual and normative. Most learn to adjust to work and study demands. Work enables the acquisition of transferable interpersonal skills, even in poorly rewarded jobs. (SK)

Includes "Introduction" (Ehrenberg); "Effect of the Minimum Wage [MW] on the Fast-Food Industry" (Katz, Krueger); "Using Regional Variation in Wages to Measure Effects of the Federal MW" (Card); "Do MWs Reduce Employment?" (Card); "Employment Effects of Minimum and Subminimum Wages" (Neumark, Wascher); and "Wage Mobility of MW Workers" (Smith, Vavrichek). (SK)

Describes a writing assignment that requires students to research and report on what it would be like to live on minimum wage. Explains that this assignment is not really any different than the traditional assignment, it is simply more obvious about its political content because it involves an inquiry into economics rather than literature or culture. (MG)

Using data from 1954-86, including the 1980s period of relative decline in the value of the minimum wage, a study found that a 10 percent increase in minimum wage reduced teen unemployment by less than 1 percent. In addition, no apparent effect on employment of adults aged 20-24 was found, and minimal differences appeared for sex and race. (SK)

Studies suggest negative employment consequences if the minimum wage is increased. This may not affect poverty among households headed by women because the unemployment rate does not seem to play a statistically significant role in determining the poverty rate for this cohort. (Author)

Examines how the numbers of workers with earnings at or below the federal minimum wage varies, depending on how the hourly earnings measure is computed. (Author)

Discusses major laws enacted on a variety of subjects, including minimum wage, parental leave, drugs and AIDS testing, and door-to-door sales by children. A state-by-state summary of labor legislation is included. (Author)

An exploratory econometric model to explain the duration of industrial training programs and to assess training policy is explored. The major results are that most training is conducted in large firms, turnover discourages specific training while government assistance encourages it, and neither minimum wages nor unions have significant negative impact on training. (Author/SK)

This article focuses on earnings as a pure wage paid to the employee--stripped of any effects of tips, premium pay for overtime, bonuses, and commissions. It discusses median hourly earnings and earnings distribution (those receiving $12.00 or more per hour, minimum and subminimum wage workers). (CT)

Discusses changes that might take place as a result of regularizing the status of undocumented workers without changing the total size of the alien workforce. Suggests that the influence of legal status on market wage rates and minimum wage enforcement is weak and that the presence of undocumented (versus resident) aliens can weaken union organization efforts. (KH)

Examines participation and nonparticipation of Black youths in the labor force from a social and psychological perspective. Includes a discussion of the impact of minimum wage, cultural differences, job training programs, and discrimination at the workplace on Black youth unemployment. The problem requires racial and institutional cooperation. (ETS)