IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sus/susewp/2111.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The UK Minimum Wage at Age 22: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Dickens

    (Department of Economics, University of Sussex
    Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics)

  • Rebecca Riley

    (National Institute of Economic and Social Research
    LLAKES, Institute of Education)

  • David Wilkinson

    (National Institute of Economic and Social Research)

Abstract

A regression discontinuity approach is used to analyse the effect of the legislated increase in the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) that occurs at age 22 on various labour market outcomes. Using data from the Labour Force Survey we find a 2- 4% point increase in the employment rate of low skilled individuals. Unemployment declines among men and inactivity among women. We find no such effect before the NMW was introduced and no robust impacts at age 21 or 23 years. Our results are robust to a range of specification tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Dickens & Rebecca Riley & David Wilkinson, 2011. "The UK Minimum Wage at Age 22: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," Working Paper Series 2111, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:2111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/documents/wps-21-2011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark B. Stewart, 2002. "Estimating the Impact of the Minimum Wage Using Geographical Wage Variation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 64(supplemen), pages 583-605, December.
    2. Mark B. Stewart, 2004. "The Impact of the Introduction of the U.K. Minimum Wage on the Employment Probabilities of Low-Wage Workers," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(1), pages 67-97, March.
    3. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    4. Lemieux, Thomas & Milligan, Kevin, 2008. "Incentive effects of social assistance: A regression discontinuity approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 807-828, February.
    5. Lee, David S. & Card, David, 2008. "Regression discontinuity inference with specification error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 655-674, February.
    6. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    7. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2012. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 933-959.
    8. Dickens, Richard & Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan, 1999. "The Effects of Minimum Wages on Employment: Theory and Evidence from Britain," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 1-22, January.
    9. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    10. David Card & Carlos Dobkin & Nicole Maestas, 2009. "Does Medicare Save Lives?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 597-636.
    11. Stephen Machin & Alan Manning, 1992. "Minimum Wages," CEP Discussion Papers dp0080, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Richard Dickens & Alan Manning, 2004. "Has the national minimum wage reduced UK wage inequality?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 167(4), pages 613-626, November.
    13. Linneman, Peter, 1982. "The Economic Impacts of Minimum Wage Laws: A New Look at an Old Question," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 443-469, June.
    14. Moulton, Brent R., 1986. "Random group effects and the precision of regression estimates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 385-397, August.
    15. Stewart, Mark B, 2002. "Estimating the Impact of the Minimum Wage Using Geographical Wage Variation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 64(0), pages 583-605, Supplemen.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The UK Minimum Wage at Age 22: A Regression Discontinuity Approach
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2011-07-29 02:21:20
    2. Costs of the living wage
      by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2016-02-02 19:22:11

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Robayo,Monica & Terskaya,Anastasia & Koettl-Brodmann,Stefanie, 2020. "Ex-ante Evaluation of the Impact of Increases in Minimum Wages on Labor Market Outcomes in Kosovo," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9357, The World Bank.
    2. Richard Dickens & Alan Manning & Tim Butcher, 2012. "Minimum Wages and Wage Inequality: Some Theory and an Application to the UK," Working Paper Series 4512, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. BARGAIN Olivier & DOORLEY Karina & VAN KERM Philippe, 2016. "Minimum wages and the gender gap in pay. Evidence from the UK and Ireland," LISER Working Paper Series 2016-02, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).

    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. Richard Dickens & Rebecca Riley & David Wilkinson, 2011. "The UK Minimum Wage at Age 22: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," Working Paper Series 2111, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    3. Christelis, Dimitris & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna, 2020. "The impact of health insurance on stockholding: A regression discontinuity approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    4. Mark B. Stewart & Joanna K. Swaffield, 2008. "The Other Margin: Do Minimum Wages Cause Working Hours Adjustments for Low‐Wage Workers?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(297), pages 148-167, February.
    5. Lei Xu & Yu Zhu, 2023. "Does the employment effect of national minimum wage vary by non‐employment rate? A regression discontinuity approach," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 91(1), pages 18-36, January.
    6. Bartalotti, Otávio C. & Calhoun, Gray & He, Yang, 2016. "Bootstrap Confidence Intervals for Sharp Regression Discontinuity Designs with the Uniform Kernel," Staff General Research Papers Archive 3394, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    7. Dickens, Richard & Draca, Mirko, 2005. "The employment effects of the October 2003 increase in the national minimum wage," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19889, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Dong, Yingying, 2010. "Jumpy or Kinky? Regression Discontinuity without the Discontinuity," MPRA Paper 25461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D Cattaneo & Max H Farrell, 2020. "Optimal bandwidth choice for robust bias-corrected inference in regression discontinuity designs [Econometric methods for program evaluation]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 23(2), pages 192-210.
    10. Eduardo Fé & Bruce Hollingsworth, 2016. "Short- and long-run estimates of the local effects of retirement on health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(4), pages 1051-1067, October.
    11. Hsing-Wen Han & Hsien-Ming Lien & Tzu-Ting Yang, 2020. "Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Utilization in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 238-278, August.
    12. Xi Chen, 2017. "Old age pension and intergenerational living arrangements: a regression discontinuity design," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 455-476, June.
    13. Joaquín Artés & Ignacio Jurado, 2018. "Government fragmentation and fiscal deficits: a regression discontinuity approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 367-391, June.
    14. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    15. Ari Hyytinen & Jaakko Meriläinen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Otto Toivanen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 1019-1051, July.
    16. Dolores De la Mata & Carlos Felipe Gaviria, 2015. "Losing Health Insurance When Young: Impacts on Usage of Medical Services and Health," CINCH Working Paper Series 1508, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health, revised Aug 2015.
    17. Guillaume Blanc & Masahiro Kubo, 2023. "French," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2308, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    18. Robert W. Fairlie & Kanika Kapur & Susan Gates, 2016. "Job Lock: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 92-121, January.
    19. Gong, Jie & Lu, Yi & Xie, Huihua, 2020. "The average and distributional effects of teenage adversity on long-term health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Minimum Wage Legislation; Low Wage;

    JEL classification:

    • 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:sus:susewp:2111. 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: University of Sussex Business School Communications Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsusuk.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.