Only it isn’t. An effective anti-poverty tool is one that targets those who are poor and provides them with a higher income. The minimum wage does not do that because an important reason why many people are in poverty is that they cannot find employment or can only find part-time employment. Even doubling the minimum wage does nothing to help those people. The other reason the minimum wage is not an effective anti-poverty tool is that very few people are actually employed at the minimum wage and many of those are not the people we think of when we worry about poverty.
A 2010 Statistics Canada study reported on the number of people working at the minimum wage and provided a snapshot of who those people are. The study reported that;