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• APPENDIX 5. 5'j Krueger," which examined changes in employment at 410 fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,before and after New Jersey raised its minimum wage in 1992. The New Jersey increase was substantial — from 54.25 to 55.05 an hour, or 18.8%, and restaurants in neighboring eastern Pennsylvania faced no such increase. Their study found no significant differences in employment changes at these businesses across the border of the two states. Card and Krueger followed this study with a more comprehensive book,Myth and Measurement, which drove a final nail into the coffin of the textbook relationship between minimum wages and unemployment."An attempt to refute Card and Krueger's results,ahhough seized upon by opponents of increasing minimum wages,20 was found lacking within the profession." The other part of the traditional economic theory of labor markets that has been part of the public policy debate is more explicitly ideological. The "marginal productivity theory," described above, says that workers are indeed paid according to their productivity. This has a normative implication that is difficult to avoid — that is, the market rewards people according to what they deserve, or contribute to the economy. This belief is not just the province of economists, but has been part of the popular ideological scenery since the Industrial Revolution. Proponents of a higher minimum wage have had to contend with this precept as well, but they seem to have made some headway during the most recent debate over the federal minimum wage. This is partly due to their success in challenging the conventional stereotype of minimum wage workers as teenagers from middle class families earning some extra spending money in their spare time. The most recent increase in the Federal minimum wage directly affects more than 11.8 million workers, some three-quarters of whom are adults. About 400/6 of those affected are the sole breadwinners for their families.'And these figures do not include the-millions of workers earning more than$5.15 per hour whose wages are part of the"minimum wage contour,"—that is, they tend to be pushed up when the minimum wage rises. There is of course some level of the minimum wage that would actually cause employers to eliminate jobs; whether any of the living wage ordinances could reach this level remains to be seen. One major difference between some of these ordinances and minimum wage laws is that to the extent ~Card and Krueger,-wini s mm Wades and Employmmt:A Can Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,"Ammemt F.cow nic Bewww.Vol 84,No.4,pp.772-93,1994.Other studies of different regions m recent years reached simda eonchisioos.e4 Katz and Krueger(1992),for fast-food rests mts in Texas; Spriggs and Klein(1994),for food-service businesses in Jackaw Mississippi and Greensboro,North Carolina. i9Card and I'ruW,Alydt and Meammment:Tfu Mews Fxonom=of dw Mim mum Wage.Princeton.N.J.: Princeton Univasity Press,(1995). 20A major study prepared m opposition to the Chicago living wage wdmaace relied on the Neumark and Wascher study (cited below)to own that"the consensus among eeoaamtsrs is that employment declines when the annimum wage is raised"(Tolley,Bernstein.and Lesage,p.41)See also,e.g.,Richard Berman's op-ed against the federal minimum wage increase(Wall Street Journal,March 29, 1996). 21 See Schmitt(1996)for a thorough review of Neumark and Wascher's(1995)failed attempt to refute Card and Krueger's research. 22See Mishel,L.ava=ce.Jared Bernstsm,and Edith Rasell."Who Wins With a Higher Minimum Wage?" Bneftng Paper.Washington,D.C.:Economic Policy Institute. 1995.