Minimum wage hike could lift millions from poverty
By Morgan Whitaker, MSNBC
Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could help to lift nearly 5 million Americans out of poverty, according to a study released last week.
University of Massachusetts-Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube found that proposals to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 would reduce the number of non-elderly living in poverty by about 4.6 million in the short term, and that nearly 7 million would be lifted from poverty over the long term.
The study further finds that the poverty rate – which rose by 3.4 percent during the Great Recession, and has not significantly dropped – could be cut in half if Congress passed a $10.10 minimum wage law. He estimates that an average family in the bottom 10 percent
of earners in the United States would see an extra of $1,700 of income a year.