LIMITATIONS AND GAPS
The research on the wage and employment impacts of minimum wages in developing
countries is voluminous, but most of it concerns Latin American countries; other
regions have been studied much less. And, even in Latin America, there is little
research on other factors that affect the relationship between minimum wages and
poverty. Among the most important information gaps in most countries is how and
why raising the minimum wage affects household members in different ways—and
whether the impacts differ in poor and nonpoor households.
For most countries, it would be useful to determine whether workers who earn the
minimum wage are likely to live in poor households and whether they are likely to
be household heads or secondary family workers. More difficult, but also quite
important, would be to estimate the positive wage effects and negative employment
impacts of minimum wages separately for different household members, especially