Increasing the Minimum Wage Encourages Students to Drop Out

Over at Tech Central Station professor Stephen Bainbridge quotes from a report:

“Minimum wages increase the probability that teenagers leave school to become employed or work more hours, and increase the probability that they leave school
and become non-enrolled and non-employed. Minimum wages also increase the probability that lower-wage employed teenagers become non-enrolled and non-employed.”

Bainbridge then notes:

Increasing the minimum wage is thus problematic because it makes the choice of work over school marginally more attractive.

Maybe increasing the minimum wage in Hawaii isn’t such a great idea after all. We have enough of a drop-out problem as it is.

Whole article here.

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