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The minimum wage has never been as high on the political agenda as it is today, with politicians in Germany, the UK, the US, and other OECD countries calling for substantial increases in the rate. One reason for the rising interest is the growing consensus among economists and policymakers that minimum wages, set at the right level, may help low-paid workers without harming employment prospects. But how should countries set their minimum wage rate? The processes that countries use to set their minimum wage rate and structure differ greatly, as do the methods for adjusting it. The different approaches have merits and shortcomings.

The previous Labour government pledged to abolish child poverty and introduced a range of welfare reforms that emphasised the role of work as the primary route out of poverty. This culminated in the Child Poverty Act (2010) which commits all future governments to the abolition of child poverty. This paper examines New Labour's record on child poverty and examines the factors responsible for its change. While the welfare reforms of the late 1990s did increase work among families with children, this didn't translate into large falls in child poverty. Those entering work still relied on substantial increases in government benefits to lift them over the poverty line. The current coalition government has reaffirmed its commitment to the Child Poverty Act and is also emphasising the role of work. The lessons of the past decade cast severe doubt on whether the current coalition government strategy of promoting work will be any more successful in reducing child poverty. With planned benefit cuts in the pipeline we could well experience some substantial increases in child poverty over the coming years.

Because a fair society and the strongest possible economy depend upon leaving no one behind, Britain must build on the reforms taking nearly one million children out of poverty and give every child the best possible start in life. So our [fourth] ambition is – by the end of the next decade – child poverty reduced by half – on our way to ending child poverty within twenty years. (Chancellor of the Exchequer, pre-budget report, November 1999)

In this paper I study wage mobility in Great Britain using the New Earnings Surveys of 1975–94 and the British Household Panel Surveys of 1991–94. Measuring mobility in terms of decile transition matrices, I find a considerable degree of immobility within the wage distribution from one year to the next. Mobility is higher when measured over longer time periods. Those in lower deciles in the wage distribution are much more likely to exit into unemployment and non‐employment. Measuring mobility by studying changes in individuals' actual percentile rankings in the wage distribution, I find evidence that short‐run mobility rates have fallen since the late 1970s. This has potentially important welfare implications, given the rise in cross‐section earnings inequality observed over the last two decades.

Early work on the national minimum wage (NMW) suggested that policymakers in the UK had succeeded in raising the pay of low‐paid workers without impairing their employment prospects. This paper shows that when we focus on the most vulnerable workers, part‐time females, the NMW appears to be associated with reductions in employment retention. These negative impacts were evident when the NMW was introduced and also when it was increased faster than average wages in the mid‐2000s. We also show that these falls in employment among part‐time females are exacerbated by the recession.