Political support for minimum wage legislation: 1989

A model explaining senators’ votes on minimum wage increases in 1966 and 1974 was applied to the 1977 and 1989 votes with similar results. The extent of unionization in each state was positively associated with votes in favor of minimum wage increases. State wage levels were not significantly associated with senators’ votes. These results held for Republican senators as well as for all senators. However, neither wage levels nor unionization rates was a significant factor explaning Democrats’ votes on minimum wage increases.     

State minimum wage laws: Youth coverage and impact

Federal minimum wage statutes cover only 70 percent of the work force and 30 percent of all employers. State laws are designed to close some of these coverage gaps and in some cases to set higher wage floors. Hence, differences in state wage floors and coverage should affect employment rates and wage distributions, particularly among low-skilled workers. Evidence from the National Longitudinal Ssurveys of Youth is mixed, however: State wage floors appear to have no impact on youth employment or entry wages, but coverage exemptions appear to increase both employment and wages. These observations underscore the need to include state provisions in models of minimum wage impacts, particularly for later periods (e.g., 1988–1991) when state wage floors were relatively higher.     

Demographic consequences of migration trends in Puerto Rico: 1950-1980

"This paper examines the evolution and changes in migration patterns [in Puerto Rico] through the 1970's based on data from the 1980 census. The focus is on demographic consequences of migration, particularly with regard to population growth, redistribution and changing age structure." A final section is concerned with the socioeconomic implications of migration. (summary in FRE, SPA)     

Materialist Scholarship and The People of Puerto Rico

The People of Puerto Rico occupies an ambivalent place in both the genealogy of anthropological theory and the understanding of Puerto Rican society. Its co-authors collectively developed a uniform and complex conceptual scheme which expressed both convergence and divergence among them. The book furthered Marxist approaches in U.S. anthropology and was the first serious scholarly materialist analysis of Puerto Rico. While privileging the lives of common people, it fell short of representing important strains of Puerto Rican diversity and socio-historical dynamics. The Puerto Rico Social Anthropology Project used four different models to explain the genesis of cultural forms and the interrelations among aspects of society/culture, in a given, homogeneous, “subculture” or “socio-cultural segment” of a complex society. The Project's members stressed a linear-utilitarian analysis of these subcultures, but where they could not account for observed cultural forms with such an approach, they appealed to the culture-psychology relation. This article considers the four interlinked paradigms, the associated analysis of socio-cultural trends, the resulting problematic theoretical consequences, and the flawed Marxism of the work.     

Introduction: The Puerto Rico Project: Reflections Sixty Years Later

In the late 1940s Julian Steward initiated a social anthropological study of Puerto Rico, carried out by a team working in a range of communities representing different ecological zones. The project was a landmark in anthropology but met with criticism from Puerto Rican scholars. The articles in this collection reconsider the Puerto Rico Project in terms of its place within the history of anthropology, its reception in Puerto Rico and elsewhere, and some theoretical and political issues raised by it.     

The impact of the minimum wage in West Virginia: A test of the low-wage-area theory

VI. Conclusions West Virginia counties do provide evidence of significant dis-employment due to the minimum wage, a finding that supports the theory that low-wage areas are more susceptible to employment losses when the legislated minimum wage is increased. My results show that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage will reduce total employment in the average West Virginia county by 1.1 percent. The most rural counties may also respond more severely, up to 1.4 percent for the same minimum wage change. I thank Clifford Hawley, Sudeshna Bandypadhyay, George Hammond, Stratford Douglass, Brian Cushing, Tom Garrett, Victor Claar, Gary Wagner, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

The Influence of The People of Puerto Rico Project on Mexican Anthropology

In the 1970s in Mexico, anthropological regional projects were designed to explore new research interests: irrigation works, peasants, rural capitalism, and mines. Julian H. Steward, Eric R. Wolf, and Sidney W. Mintz, participants in the research project on Puerto Rico, were all popular authors among the new generation of anthropologists and were frequently cited in their thesis bibliographies. This article explores the influence of the People of Puerto Rico project at the design level of these new collective and regional projects. Students were distributed within larger areas, covering various climatic and production subareas, in their research training. The important role of cities, industries, haciendas, markets, and government programs was highlighted. I suggest that senior anthropologists and academic leaders who were planning this new anthropological era were more familiar than their students with the conceptual lines of the Puerto Rico Project. I gained greater insight into the difficulties of a regional research enterprise when I did anthropological research in the 1980s at the Tennessee Valley project.     

Welfare Policy and the Construction of Legitimate Authority: The Case of Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the role of the welfare state in maintaining state authority by testing the relationship between participation in state social programs and the espousal of ideals that reject the sovereignty of the existing state. We use the case of Puerto Rico, drawing on surveys of residents of Puerto Rico regarding their participation in social welfare programs and their views on the legitimacy of the U.S. state, distinguishing between means-tested and universal social programs. The research demonstrates that the form and extent of social citizenship programs affect the continued acceptance of authority of the U.S. federal government over the island’s territory and population. Specifically, the use of means-tested social benefits predicts a greater acceptance of the authority of the sovereign state. These findings may be considered broadly informative to the power of social welfare programs in garnering quiescence among minority populations, expanding the existing literature to illustrate differences in opinion of state legitimacy based on the type of social benefits one receives.     

The labor market effects of minimum wage laws: A new perspective

Economists almost uniformly argue that minimum wage laws benefit some workers at the expense of other workers. This argument is implicitly founded on the assumption that money wages are the only form of labor compensation. Based on the more realistic assumption that labor is paid in many different ways, the analysis of this paper demonstrates that all laborers within a perfectly competitive labor market are adversely affected by minimum wages. Although employment opportunities are reduced by such laws, affected labor markets clear. Conventional analysis of the effect of minimum wages on monopsony markets is also upset by the model developed. The author is indebted to Rex Cottle, Benjamin Hawkins, Hugh Macaulay, Michael Maloney, Thomas Schaap, Gordon Tullock, Gene Uselton, and Karen Vaughn for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Caribbean migration to Puerto Rico: a comparison of Cubans and Dominicans

"The purpose of this article is to address the questions posed by intra-Caribbean migration in the context of Cuban and Dominican migration to Puerto Rico since 1960. The essay's point of departure is an estimate of the size of the Cuban and Dominican populations on the island. The [first] section compares the mode of incorporation of Cubans and Dominicans into the Puerto Rican housing and labor markets. Finally, the article analyzes the socioeconomic background as well as the political and economic motivations of Cuban and Dominican migrants. The article concludes with suggestions for some avenues for further research and reflection."     

BB see: Transparency legislation and public discussions of wage inequality

Disparities in compensation persist between men and women. Wage transparency, which enables workers to compare their compensation to what others receive in their organization, can be an important tool for redressing specific intra‐firm disparities tied to discriminatory processes. Drawing on newspaper reports about gender pay differentials, we provide the first analysis of whether a public disclosure of pay transparency corresponds to a shift in broader public discourse, as represented by news coverage. Thematic analysis of newspaper coverage of the gender pay gap in Britain before and after the high‐profile release of BBC wage data in 2017 reveals a shift from choice‐based explanations to those emphasizing structural inequality and discrimination. The findings suggest that wage transparency coupled with news media attention may not only identify inequitable pay in firms, but also work more broadly to create space to discuss discriminatory practices and redress for pay disparities.     

Mortality among three Puerto Rican populations: residents of Puerto Rico and migrants in New York City and in the balance of the United States, 1979-81

"This study attempts to explain similarities and differences in the mortality experience of three population groups: Puerto Ricans on the island commonwealth, Puerto Rican born persons in New York City and Puerto Rican born persons in the rest of mainland United States. Mortality is much higher among Puerto Ricans in New York City than among those residing elsewhere. Much of the difference is due to excess mortality caused by cirrhosis of the liver and homicide. Puerto Rican born persons living on the mainland but outside New York City generally have low mortality, even when compared with U.S. whites."     

Changing Space,Making Race: Distance,Nostalgia, and the Folklorization of Blackness in Puerto Rico

In this article, I critique some of the discursive terms in which blackness is folklorized and celebrated institutionally as part of the nation in Puerto Rico. I examine a government-sponsored housing project that meant to revitalize and stylize the community of San Ant n, in Ponce, as a historic black site. Although government officials tried to preserve what they considered to be traditional aspects of this community, conflict arose because not all residents agreed with this preservationist agenda. I document the controversy, linking the government's approach to racial discourses that represent blackness as a vanishing and distant component of Puerto Rico. I argue that this inclusion and celebration complements ideologies of blanqueamiento (whitening) and race-mixture that distance blackness to the margins of the nation and romanticize black communities as remnants of a past era. I link these dynamics to modernizing State agendas and discourses of authenticity that fuel cultural nationalism worldwide.     

The New Historiographies of Criminality and Social Disorder in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico

Abstract This article briefly examines why the new histories of 1898–1930 Puerto Rico have not explored the full range of 'native' laboring-poor responses to being transformed into a proletarianized workforce. Drawing on my recent research on this question. I primarily critique the handful of historiographies that actually concentrate on what Foucault called the 'popular illegalities.'My analysis rethinks the historicity of such transgressions by exploring why these social practices tend to be separated from, or perceived as antagonistic to, the subaltern responses blocking the advance of capitalist socioeconomic relations in this U.S. overseas colony.     

The illegal alien work force,demand for unskilled labor,and the minimum wage

Estimates of the illegal alien work force, employment, and the number employed below the legal minimum wage are not available, but are often required for the study of a variety of public policy issues, e.g., immigration and refugee policy, and policy towards the monitoring of minimum wage laws. This paper attempts to fill this void by developing estimates of these quantities. Of equal importance, however, is determining what light this and other related evidence throws upon the oft-expressed view that the demand for unskilled labor at below-legal-minimum wage rates is virtually inelastic. Evidence is presented which contradicts this belief. I am grateful to Janet Hunt and Richard H. Timberlake, Jr. for valuable comments but I absolve them of responsibility for any errors.     

Economic growth and inequality in Singapore: The case for a minimum wage

In the context of Singapore's ageing population, the employment of large numbers of low‐skilled foreign workers is proving to be a major challenge to inclusive growth because of the stagnation of low‐wage workers' incomes. In order to address this problem, the author makes the case for introducing a minimum wage to complement existing in‐work benefit schemes. After addressing the commonly voiced objections to a minimum wage system, he suggests ways in which a minimum wage could be implemented in Singapore. New measures to enhance the social safety net and foster more sustainable economic growth are also proposed.     

Mobile Livelihoods: The Sociocultural Practices of Circular Migrants between Puerto Rico and the United States1

This article focuses on the bilateral flow of people between Puerto Rico and the United States ‐ what has come to be known as circular, commuter, or revolving‐door migration. It documents the migrants' livelihood practices based on a recent field study of population flows between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Specifically, the basic characteristics of multiple movers, one‐time movers and nonmovers residing in Puerto Rico are compared. More broadly, the article assesses the implications of circular migration for Puerto Rican communities on and off the island. The author's basic argument is that the constant displacement of people ‐ both to and from the island ‐ blurs the territorial, linguistic, and juridical boundaries of the Puerto Rican nation. As people expand their means of subsistence across space, they develop multiple attachments to various localities. In the Puerto Rican situation, such mobile livelihoods are easier to establish than in other places because of the free movement of labor and capital between the island and the mainland. The author hypothesizes that circulation does not entail major losses in human capital for most Puerto Ricans, but rather often constitutes an occupational, educational, and linguistic asset.