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Hiking Minimum Wage an Inefficient Tool to Fight Poverty: Fed Research by JEFF COX, CNBC SHARE Share Tweet Share Email Print Comment Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale. Fast-food workers and their supporters join a nationwide protest for higher wages and union rights outside McDonald's in Los Angeles on Nov. 10. Lucy Nicholson / Reuters David Neumark, visiting scholar at the San Francisco Fed, contends in the paper that raising the minimum wage has only limited benefits in the war against poverty, due in part because relatively few of those falling below the poverty line actually receive the wage. Many of the benefits from raising the wage, a move already undertaken by multiple governments around the country as well as some big-name companies, tend to go to higher-income families