Dube Named UMass Amherst Spotlight Scholar

Working at McDonalds in high school for minimum wage, Arin Dube knew he had a path forward to college and a professional career. That wasn’t the case for most of his co-workers.

“There’s a mistaken notion in the United States that we have a lot of mobility—that increased mobility can substitute for a more equal distribution of income,” says Dube, a professor in the department of economics. “For many people, that’s just not true. The fact that people spend years at low-wage jobs tells us how dependent workers are on these jobs and contradicts the notion that these are stepping stones.”

Widely considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on the economic effects of minimum wage policies, Dube has been interested in issues of income and wage inequality “probably longer than I’ve known those terms,” he says.