What are the spacial implications of minimum wages?

Sep 6, 2018

causal effect minimum wages distribution employment regional migration exploit spatial heterogeneity workers

The key idea to estimate the causal effect of minimum wages on the distribution of wages, employment and regional migration is to exploit spatial heterogeneity in the share of workers that earn less than the statutory minimum prior to the introduction. Image: REUTERS/China Daily

Gabriel Ahlfeldt

Associate Professor of Urban Economics and Land Development, London School of Economics

Duncan Roth

Senior Researcher, Institute for Employment Research

Tobias Seidel

Professor of Economics, University of Duisberg-Essen

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Future of Work is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Future of Work

Figure 1. Spatial distribution of the minimum wage bite.

Figure 2. Impact of the minimum wage bite on the wage distribution - at the 10th percentile

Figure 2. Impact of the minimum wage bite on the wage distribution - at the 50th percentile

Figure 2. Impact of the minimum wage bite on the wage distribution - at the 90th percentile

Figure 3. Impact of the minimum wage bite on employment.

Figure 4. Impact of the minimum wage bite on out-migration

Figure 4. Impact of the minimum wage bite on in-migration

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.