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  4. Spring 1999
  5. Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage

Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage

  • Robert E. Prasch
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 13, no. 2, Spring 1999
(pp. 221-230)
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Abstract

Beginning in 1912, a number of states passed minimum wage legislation that applied exclusively to women and minors. These tentative experiments in economic legislation ended in 1923 when the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's minimum wage law. Remarkably, at this time virtually all professional American economists supported some variety of minimum wage legislation; however, they did not all give the same reasons. This paper briefly examines the context in which this minimum wage legislation was passed and then surveys several of the arguments that American economists gave in support of minimum wage laws.

Citation

Prasch, Robert, E. 1999. "Retrospectives: American Economists in the Progressive Era on the Minimum Wage." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 13 (2): 221-230. DOI: 10.1257/jep.13.2.221

JEL Classification

  • J38 Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: Public Policy
  • B29 History of Thought since 1925: Other
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