A Note on Measuring the Depth of Minimum Wage Violation

Abstract

Abstract In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices that, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The standard measure is a special case of this family of indices, but other members of the family highlight the depth of violation. We present an application to S outh A frica to show that the depth of violation matters, and is not captured by the standard measure in actual situations.