Using the March Current Population Survey data from 1984 to 2013, I provide a comprehensive evaluation of how minimum wage policies influence the distribution of family incomes. I find robust evidence that higher minimum wages shift down the cumulative distribution of family incomes at the bottom, reducing the share of non-elderly individuals with incomes below 50, 75, 100, and 125 percent of the federal poverty threshold. The long run (3 or more years) minimum wage elasticity of the non-elderly poverty rate with respect to the minimum wage ranges between -0.22 and -0.55 across alternative specifications that subsume most of the approaches used in the literature to construct valid counterfactuals. Inverting the policy's effect on the cumulative distribution, I estimate minimum wage elasticities for unconditional quantiles of family incomes. The long run minimum wage elasticities for the 10th and 15th unconditional quantiles of equivalized family incomes range between 0.15 and 0.49 depending on specification. A reduction in public assistance partly offsets these income gains, which are on average 72% as large when using an expanded income definition including tax credits and non-cash transfers.

中文翻译：

---

最低工资与家庭收入分配

我使用 1984 年至 2013 年的三月份当前人口调查数据，对最低工资政策如何影响家庭收入分配进行了全面评估。我发现强有力的证据表明，提高最低工资会降低底层家庭收入的累积分配，降低收入低于联邦贫困线 50%、75%、100% 和 125% 的非老年人的比例。非老年人贫困率相对于最低工资的长期（3 年或更长时间）最低工资弹性范围在 -0.22 和 -0.55 之间，涵盖了文献中用于构建有效反事实的大多数方法的替代规范。反转政策对累积分配的影响，我估计了家庭收入无条件分位数的最低工资弹性。等值家庭收入的第 10 和第 15 无条件分位数的长期最低工资弹性介于 0.15 和 0.49 之间，具体取决于规范。公共援助的减少部分抵消了这些收入收益，在使用包括税收抵免和非现金转移在内的扩展收入定义时，这些收益平均增加了 72%。