Lecture Introduction

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of minimum wages on blacks, and on the relative impacts on blacks vs. whites. We study not only teenagers – the focus of much of the minimum wage-employment literature – but also other low-skill groups. We focus primarily on employment, which has been the prime concern with the minimum wage research literature. We find evidence that job loss effects from higher minimum wages are much more evident for blacks, and in contrast not very detectable for whites, and are often large enough to generate adverse effects on earnings.

We supplement this work with additional analysis that distinguishes between effects of an individual’s race and the race composition of where they live. The extensive residential segregation by race in the United States raises the question of whether the more adverse effects of minimum wages on blacks are attributable to more adverse effects on black individuals, or more adverse effects on neighborhoods with large black populations. We find relatively little evidence of heterogeneity in effects across areas defined by the share black among residents. But the large disemployment effects for blacks coupled with strong residential segregation imply that that adverse effects of minimum wages are concentrated in areas with high concentrations of blacks.

Speaker

Professor David Neumark (University of California, Irvine)

Lecture Time

March 26, 2025 (Wednesday), 13:30–15:00

Venue

Room 347, Qiu Shi Building

Lecture Language

English

Moderator

Dr. Qian Weng, Associate Professor 

Speaker Biography
Dr. David Neumark is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Co-Director of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy. He serves as Co-Editor of the Journal of Urban Economics and Editor of the IZA Journal of Labor Policy, in addition to holding editorial board positions at several other academic journals. Professor Neumark has made significant research contributions across numerous areas of labor economics with strong public policy relevance. His groundbreaking work on labor market discrimination has pioneered new methodologies for measuring discrimination, and he has authored extensive studies on age discrimination and the economics of aging. As one of the early contributors to the "new minimum wage research," his scholarship examines not only the employment effects of minimum wages but also their impacts on income distribution, human capital, and earnings, as well as the complementary relationship between minimum wage policies and tax credits.