Minimum Wages And Poverty

This research book focuses one set of policy issues relating to the collapse of the low-wage labor market in the United States. The broad question that we are concerned with is how do alternative labor market policies improve the economic well-being of families and persons at or near the bottom of the income distribution? We address this issue by investigating the following question: instead of raising the minimum wage or increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), what would be effects of a policy that rebates a portion of the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes paid by workers in low-income families?