In the first State of the Union of his second term, President Obama pushed to raise the Federal minimum wage to $9 an hour to address poverty and help low-income Americans.  The President's proposal is likely to revive the debate in Congress over the merits and dangers of raising the minimum wage.



To put these debates in context, the New York Times recently published an interactive tool showing the hard choices that 4.8 million Americans living on the smallest paychecks have to make.  Could you live on the minimum wage?

Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/02/09/opinion/minimum-wage.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/the-case-for-a-higher-minimum-wage.html

TeachingwithData.org:
Men's Real Hourly Wages by Education, 1973-2007 (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/2947)
Topics At A Glance: Poverty (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/2967)
Income Inequality in the US (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3182)
Brookings Institution Interactive: The Final Countdown: Prospects for Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030 (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3921)
Recession Trends (http://www.teachingwithdata.org/resource/3067)