Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies

Lessons From The Hoover Policy Boot Camp

Contributing Scholar: David Neumark

Minimum Wage: Good Intentions, Hard Evidence

Minimum wage policy is one of the most misunderstood yet most popular tools attempting to address inequality. Drawing on decades of empirical research, Hoover Visiting Fellow and labor economist, David Neumark, examines what minimum wage increases actually do to wages, employment, prices, and poverty—and why good intentions can still produce bad results.

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Minimum Wage Policy and Poverty

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Published April 3, 2026

Minimum wage debates often begin with inequality and poverty—but those are not the same problem. Earnings depend not only on wages, but on hours worked and family structure. As David Neumark argues, much of today’s income inequality reflects declining work, not simply low pay, while poverty is a family-level outcome the minimum wage does not directly target. Understanding what minimum wages can and cannot fix is the first step toward evaluating the policy clearly.

Check out more from David Neumark:

Read "The Minimum Wage Is a Dead End" by David Neumark here.
Read "Minimum Wages and Race Disparities" by David Neumark here.
Read "Accounting for City Size, Minimum Wages Reduce Jobs Almost Everywhere" by David Neumark here.

Learn more about David Neumark here.

Recorded on August 14, 2025.

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The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.