Bolstering arguments that the minimum wage in the United States is a “starvation wage” that must be lifted, a new study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that millions of families with a worker earning the federal minimum or just above it are living in poverty.
Specifically, the GAO report discovered that “about 20 percent of families with a worker earning up to the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour), 13 percent of families with a worker earning above federal minimum wage to $12.00 per hour, and 5 percent of families with a worker earning $12.01 to $16 per hour were in poverty” between 1995 and 2016.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who commissioned the study, argued that the GAO’s findings amount to overwhelming evidence that $7.25 “is not enough to keep working families out poverty,” and that “Congress must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”
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