文献类型：期刊文献

英文题名：Rapid Minimum Wage Increases and Societal Sustainability: Evidence from Labor Productivity in China

作者：Gao, Yixuan[1];Ruan, Yongping[1];Ye, Zhiqiang[1]

机构：[1]East China Univ Sci & Technol, Sch Business, Shanghai 200237, Peoples R China

年份：2026

卷号：18

期号：2

外文期刊名：SUSTAINABILITY

收录：;WOS:【SSCI(收录号:WOS:001671279300001)，SCI-EXPANDED(收录号:WOS:001671279300001)】；

基金：This work has been supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 25BJY236).

语种：英文

外文关键词：minimum wage; sustainability; labor productivity; substitution effect

摘要：Minimum wage is an important tool for reducing income inequality and supporting social welfare. Consequently, governments around the world have established minimum wage systems. As such, minimum wage policies connect distributive justice with the economy's capacity to sustain broad-based welfare over time, placing the equity-efficiency trade-off at the center of societal sustainability. However, the micro-level impact of the minimum wage system on firms has always been an important topic for scholars. This study uses panel data from listed Chinese manufacturing firms over a period from 2005 to 2021 to construct an indicator of the minimum wage standards implemented in the firm locations. Employing the multiple linear regression model, this paper empirically examines the effects of minimum wage on labor productivity. The empirical findings demonstrate that minimum wage significantly reduced the sample firms' labor productivity. Moreover, the negative impact of the minimum wage was primarily concentrated among non-state-owned firms, labor-intensive firms, firms operating in industries characterized by intense product market competition, firms situated in regions with strong legal protections, firms with comparatively low average employee wages, and export-oriented firms. Subsequently, this study delves into the mechanism through which minimum wage negatively affects labor productivity. We find that implementation of minimum wage leads to a reduction in corporate investment, indicating that there is no significant substitution relationship between capital and labor. These adjustment margins provide microfoundations through which statutory wage floors can influence the resilience and inclusiveness of development, indicating that the pace and design of wage increases should balance income protection with the preservation of productive capacity to support sustainable human development-grounded in steady productivity growth, equitable income distribution, and stable firm investment. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the mechanism through which minimum wage affects labor productivity in theory, while concurrently furnishing policy insights for the optimization of the minimum wage system and maintaining sustainable societal development in practice.