Perhaps the most frequently cited book in the
minimum wage debate is Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage by David Card
and Alan B. Krueger (Princeton University Press, 1995). This is the book that challenged the traditional model
of the minimum wage's impact on employment and that so many writers on the subject have been responding to since
it was published. The attraction for the general reader is that most of the 400-page study is very accessible; while the
cores of the chapters are detailed and technical, the chapter openings and closings without exception are lucid
and rich in ideas and information. Key chapters present not only the authors' famous New Jersey-Pennsylvania restaurant
study that showed unemployment fails to worsen after a minimum wage increase but other studies of theirs as well from other
parts of the country The limitation to the book is the fact that it was published as the federal requirements
for welfare and work were changing and thus could not be taken into account.
Another work from the mid-1990s is The Quest for a Living Wage:
The History of the Federal Minimum Wage Program by Willis J. Norlund (Greenwood Press, 1997). The sub-title
is the better statement of the contents, which trace the American minimum wage from early in the 20th century to the
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the decades after. The opening chapters are perhaps the richest as they follow
the course of ideas about a national minimum that are now taken for granted, such as its coverage of men as well as women
(not the case until the FLSA!), the question of regional minimums versus a single federal one, and the court battles over
whether a minimum wage violates "freedom of contract." Nordlund has a knack for quoting bright and interesting
perceptions from his sources on all sides of the issues. The remaining chapters describe the federal minimum wage program
and related FLSA issues (including enforcement) by decade; of special interest are the complex amendments of the 1960s and
the first sophisticated economic assessments of it in the 1970s. (Since the book costs over $100 to buy--it is printed
on demand--most readers will prefer to find it through a library.)
A book with a narrower but engaging scope, also from the 1990s, is
Times Change: The Minimum Wage and The New York Times by Richard B. McKenzie (Pacific Research Institute
for Public Policy, 1994). In 100 pages, McKenzie traces the editorial positions of the New York Times on the
minimum wage from the wage's inception in 1938 up to 1993. Quoting from many of the Times' 121 editorials
on the subject, he analyzes the paper's initial opposition to the minimum wage, its change of mind in the 1950s and 60s,
and its renewed criticism in the late 1970s. One not-so-surprising influence in the changes were the stages
of economic research on the effects of minimum ages. Another influence was controversy over proposed additions
to the list of occupations covered by the wage that accompanied each proposed wage incease. McKenzie himself is a critic of
the minimum wage. His explanations of its drawbacks are clearer and more interesting than most. An appendix includes
the full text of 15 of the major editorials.
Among recent books that look beyond the economic
debate to the political sides of federal minimum wage legislation are Jerold Waltman's The Politics of the Minimum
Wage (University of Illinois Press, 2000) and his Minimum Wage Policy in Great Britain and the United
States (Algora, 2008) The first, a brief (145 pages) survey, argues for considering the
minimum wage more rigorously in terms of civic political models; Waltman resurrects Progressive ideas about civic community
and the collective good as political themes that should be brought to bear on the minimum wage debate along side the issues
of individualism and the interest-driven market. Chapters trace the history of the federal minimum wage and
its increases, the support for the minimum wage in public opinion polls, a sociological analysis of those affected
by the minimum wage, and some perspectives on the economic debate. In his book about Great Britain and the U.S.,
Waltman provides valuable history for Americans about the quite different development of Great Britain's minimum wage,
the nation's standing minimum wage advisory commission, and the greater current success of minimum wage policy there than
here. Waltman argues that what most influences the minimum wage in both countries is the degree to which it is integrated
in the political vision of how the state should assist the poor. Waltman writes clearly and engagingly throughout both books.
The Case of the Minimum Wage: Competing Policy Models by Oren M. Levin-Waldman
(State University of New York Press, 2001).
concerns a more pointed political question. Levin-Waldman argues that the reason the economists'
models have failed to be decisive in the minimum wage debate is that the debate is at bottom a political issue, a matter
of constituencies, and a basic question is why the economists have been allowed to dominate the debate so thoroughly in the
first place. The key change, according to the author, is the decline of organized labor. To demonstrate the
effect of this decline, Levin-Waldman correlates Congressional voting on the minimum wage with the union strength or
weakness of each state, a correlation he finds stronger than the link with party affiliation. The 187-page
book is a persuasive case about some hard political realities surrounding the minimum wage.
For a perspective on the minimum wage around the world, The fundamentals
of minimum wage fixing by Francois Eyraud and Catherine Saget (International Labour Organization, 2005) covers
a great deal of territory succinctly (113 pages) and clearly. Developed from the ILO's database of the 116 member States
that have agreed to basic minimum wage conventions, the book describes the different types of minimum wages, the various bargaining
and legislative procedures for setting the minimum wage, methods for changing it, economic and social criteria taken into
consideration, and its impact on employment and poverty. Tables and maps help present the global variations of
almost every feature of the minimum wage. An eye-opening survey.
Google also provides a book list on the minimum wage, with some older complete texts viewable
on-line.
--Brock Haussamen; revised June 2009
