How to Help the Working Poor

David Warsh argues that solutions to help the working poor have little to do with the minimum wage. What is needed

is some combination of education and training reforms... [and] of various forms of financial support to individuals known as the "negative income tax" and exemplified by the child tax credit; and various subsidies to employers designed to increase the rewards to work -- the enhanced-wage jobs offered to scholarship students by universities being a case in point.

And he points out how the income threshold necessary to qualify for the child credit will climb from $10,000 to $11,000, putting out of the reach of many poor people.