Chart: Black and Hispanic poverty rates would be almost 20% lower had the minimum wage remained at its 1968 inflation-adjusted level: Black and Hispanic nonelderly poverty rates in 2016, under actual and 1968-level minimum wages

Figure B

Black and Hispanic poverty rates would be almost 20% lower had the minimum wage remained at its 1968 inflation-adjusted level: Black and Hispanic nonelderly poverty rates in 2016, under actual and 1968-level minimum wages

	black and hispanic poverty
Actual 2016 poverty rate	%20.678743
2016 poverty rate with <br> 1968 minimum wage	16.911592

ChartData Download data

Source: Author’s calculations from the 2017 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, historical federal minimum wage values, and the poverty rate elasticity reported for Black and Latino individuals in Arindrajit Dube, “Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Family Incomes,” IZA Discussion Paper no. 10572, February 2017.

This chart appears in:

The erosion of the federal minimum wage has increased poverty, especially for black and Hispanic families

Previous chart: « Unemployment rate, by race, 1995–2018

Next chart: Tight labor markets are critical to reducing the share of workers earning poverty-level wages: Share of workers earning poverty-level wages, overall and by gender, 1986–2017 »