Impact of Minimum Wage Policies on Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan

This paper analyzes the minimum wage policies in Punjab province of Pakistan and its impact on poverty alleviation. For this purpose, we developed a questionnaire and collected from 315 workers of different industries operation in Punjab. The questionnaire contains 35 open and closed ended questions. The respondents were selected randomly. The dependent variable was poverty while education, skill, experience, income from industry, family size, number of dependents, monthly income of family and employment were independent variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to draw the results. We found that minimum wages have no significant impact on poverty alleviation whereas education, skill and experience have negative and significant association with poverty level. Thus, we suggest that the policy makers should not only focus on minimum wage but take policy initiative to enhance education level, skill and experience of industrial workers.