@techreport{Muller2008Would,
abstract = {In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of  7.5 per hour on the basis of a microsimulation model which accounts for the complex interactions between individual wages, the tax-benefit system and net household incomes. Simulation results show that the minimum wage would be rather ineffective in reducing poverty, even if it led to a substantial increase in hourly wages at the bottom of the wage distribution and had no negative employment effects. The ineffectiveness of a minimum wage in Germany is mainly due to the existing system of means-tested income support.},
address = {Bonn},
author = {Kai-Uwe M\"{u}ller and Viktor Steiner},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {I32; 330; Minimum wage; wage distribution; working poor; poverty reduction; micro-simulation; Mindestlohn; Wirkungsanalyse; Verteilungswirkung; Armut; Sozialhilfe; Bedarfsprinzip; Deutschland},
language = {eng},
note = {urn:nbn:de:101:1-20080527118},
number = {3491},
publisher = {IZA},
title = {Would a legal minimum wage reduce poverty? A microsimulation study for Germany},
type = {IZA Discussion Papers},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/34946},
year = {2008}
}
