(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
To Reduce Racial Inequality, Raise the Minimum Wage - The New York Times [1]
['Ellora Derenoncourt', 'Claire Montialoux']
Date: 2020-10-25
After a summer of protests over the killing of George Floyd broadened into a wider reckoning on racial injustice, corporate America and the political establishment unleashed a flurry of promises to combat systemic racism. Diversity initiatives have been launched; high-profile companies in several sectors have settled on the advancement of a few people of color in their hierarchies.
It’s clear that these actions, while positive steps, so far mostly concern an elite stratum. They are no substitute for dismantling structural racism in the economy. Recent American history, however, provides an apt lesson about which public policies are effective at reducing deep-rooted inequalities.
Our new research shows that Congress’s decision in 1966 to both raise the minimum wage and expand it to workers in previously unprotected industries led to a significant drop in earnings inequality between Black and white Americans — and explains more than 20 percent of the overall reduction in succeeding years.
The findings suggest that raising and expanding the minimum wage could once again reduce the persistent earnings divide between white workers and Black, Hispanic and Native American workers. Though legislation to raise the wage floor would be a universal program in name and application, in practice it would be a remarkably effective tool for racial justice.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/opinion/minimum-wage-race-protests.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
