IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp2892.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Minimum Wages and the Welfare of Workers in Honduras

Author

Listed:
  • Gindling, T. H.

    (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

  • Terrell, Katherine

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms in the private sector (where minimum wage legislation applies) and civil servants and self-employed workers (where it does not apply). The evidence suggests that minimum wages are effectively enforced only in medium and large-scale firms, where a 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase of 0.29% in the average wage and a reduction in employment of -0.46%. We find that increases in the private sector minimum wage are emulated in public sector wages, but there are no disemployment effects there. There is some evidence that a higher minimum wage may increase unemployment. There are no discernable effects of minimum wages on the wages of workers in small-firms or the self-employed. The positive impact of higher minimum wages on average wages is greatest for the primary educated in large private firms; but this group also suffers a very large disemployment effect. We conclude that, even in the sector where minimum wages are enforced and even under our upper bound estimate of the effect on the wages of workers, the welfare – the total earnings – of low-paid workers in the large-firm covered sector falls with higher minimum wages.

Suggested Citation

  • Gindling, T. H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2007. "Minimum Wages and the Welfare of Workers in Honduras," IZA Discussion Papers 2892, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp2892.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Charles, 1999. "Minimum wages, employment, and the distribution of income," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 32, pages 2101-2163, Elsevier.
    2. Richard Blundell & Stephen Bond, 2000. "GMM Estimation with persistent panel data: an application to production functions," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 321-340.
    3. William Maloney & Jairo Mendez, 2004. "Measuring the Impact of Minimum Wages. Evidence from Latin America," NBER Chapters, in: Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean, pages 109-130, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Martin Rama, 2002. "Globalization and Workers in Developing Countries," Economics Study Area Working Papers 41, East-West Center, Economics Study Area.
    5. James J. Heckman & Carmen Pagés, 2004. "Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number heck04-1, May.
    6. Kristensen, Nicolai & Cunningham, Wendy, 2006. "Do minimum wages in Latin America and the Caribbean matter ? Evidence from 19 countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3870, The World Bank.
    7. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1994. "Searching for the Virtues of the European Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 950, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Gilles Saint-Paul, 1994. "Do Labor Market Rigidities Fulfill Distributive Objectives?: Searching for the Virtues of the European Model," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 41(4), pages 624-642, December.
    9. Mariano Bosch, 2006. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets," CEP Discussion Papers dp0761, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Freeman, Richard B, 1996. "The Minimum Wage as a Redistributive Tool," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(436), pages 639-649, May.
    11. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fabio Sánchez & Valentina Duque & Mauricio Ruíz, 2009. "Costos laborales y no laborales y su impacto sobre el desempleo, la duración del desempleo y la informalidad en Colombia, 1980-2007," Documentos CEDE 5540, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    2. Orbeta, Aniceto Jr. C. & Lanzona, Leonardo & Paqueo, Vicente B., 2016. "The Impact of Legal Minimum Wages on Employment, Income, and Poverty Incidence in the Philippines," Discussion Papers DP 2016-54, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gindling, T.H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2009. "Minimum wages, wages and employment in various sectors in Honduras," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 291-303, June.
    2. Gindling, T.H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2010. "Minimum Wages, Globalization, and Poverty in Honduras," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 908-918, June.
    3. Gindling, T.H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2007. "The effects of multiple minimum wages throughout the labor market: The case of Costa Rica," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 485-511, June.
    4. Alaniz, Enrique & Gindling, T.H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2011. "The impact of minimum wages on wages, work and poverty in Nicaragua," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 45-59.
    5. Belser, Patrick. & Rani, Uma., 2010. "Extending the coverage of minimum wages in India : simulations from household data," ILO Working Papers 994584553402676, International Labour Organization.
    6. Gindling, T.H. & Terrell, Katherine, 2005. "The effect of minimum wages on actual wages in formal and informal sectors in Costa Rica," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 1905-1921, November.
    7. César Calderón & Alberto Chong, 2009. "Labor market institutions and income inequality: an empirical exploration," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 65-81, January.
    8. David Fairris & Gurleen Popli & Eduardo Zepeda, 2008. "Minimum Wages and the Wage Structure in Mexico," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(2), pages 181-208.
    9. Lemos Sara, 2005. "Political Variables as Instruments for the Minimum Wage," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-33, December.
    10. ArnabK. Basu & NancyH. Chau & Ravi Kanbur, 2010. "Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(543), pages 244-269, March.
    11. Pierre, Gaëlle & Scarpetta, Stefano, 2004. "Employment Regulations through the Eyes of Employers: Do They Matter and How Do Firms Respond to Them?," IZA Discussion Papers 1424, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. repec:col:000089:013537 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Alessandra Brito & Miguel Foguel & Celia Kerstenetzky, 2017. "The contribution of minimum wage valorization policy to the decline in household income inequality in Brazil: A decomposition approach," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(4), pages 540-575, October.
    14. Carlos Arango & Angélica Pachón, 2004. "Minimum Wages in Colombia: Holding the Middle with a Bite," Borradores de Economia 3224, Banco de la Republica.
    15. Carlos A.Arango & Angélica Pachón, 2004. "Minimum Wages in Colombia: Holding the Middle With a Bite on the Poor," Borradores de Economia 280, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    16. Fernando Borraz & Nicolás González, 2009. "Minimum Wage: Empirical evidence for Uruguay," Documentos de trabajo 2009003, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    17. Long, Cheryl & Yang, Jin, 2016. "How do firms respond to minimum wage regulation in China? Evidence from Chinese private firms," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 267-284.
    18. Betcherman, Gordon, 2014. "Labor market regulations : what do we know about their impacts in developing countries ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6819, The World Bank.
    19. Larrain, Mauricio & Poblete, Joaquin, 2007. "Age-differentiated minimum wages in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 777-797, November.
    20. Lemos, Sara, 2009. "Minimum wage effects in a developing country," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 224-237, April.
    21. Nguyen, Cuong, 2012. "Do Minimum Wages Affect Firms’ Labor and Capital? Evidence from Vietnam," MPRA Paper 48656, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    employment; minimum wage; wage; Central America; unemployment; Honduras;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2892. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.