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Employment, Inequality and the UK National Minimum Wage over the Medium‐Term *
Author(s) -
Dolton Peter,
Bondibene Chiara Rosazza,
Wadsworth Jonathan
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
oxford bulletin of economics and statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.131
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0084
pISSN - 0305-9049
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0084.2011.00653.x
Subject(s) - inequality , economics , minimum wage , demographic economics , term (time) , estimator , wage inequality , wage , labour economics , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , physics , quantum mechanics
We assess the impact of the national minimum wage (NMW) on employment and inequality in the UK over the decade since its introduction. We evaluate its effects in each year, using an incremental differences‐in‐differences (IDiD) estimator. Identification is based on variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets and the different sized year on year up‐ratings. We find that an increased bite of the NMW is associated with falls in lower tail wage inequality. While the average employment effect over the entire period is broadly neutral, there are small but significant positive NMW effects from 2003 onwards.