If Iraq, health care or stem-cell research didn’t highlight for voters enough differences between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the two candidates also have significant disagreements on the country’s minimum wage.

Bush, as is tradition with Republicans, has resisted a hike in the minimum wage and opposes a recent Senate bill to increase it – a bill that comes with the names of Kerry and Sen. John Edwards.

Both Democratic presidential candidate Kerry and his running mate Edwards have signed onto a bill called the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2004 that would increase the nation’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7 an hour by 2007. Wages would go up in three stages, affecting about 7.4 million workers directly, say economists.

“This would help encourage some workers out there to come back and look for jobs. It just makes sense to reward people for working,” said Jason Furman, Kerry’s economic policy director.

Bush argues the bill would reduce low-skill, low-paying jobs. His economic policy officials say Bush supports an increase in the minimum wage but wants it to be reasonable and phased in slowly. They won’t, however, give an amount or a period of time they think is reasonable.

“This is still a recovering economy and you don’t want to do anything to weaken it, so the president knows we need to be careful and cautious,” said John Bailey, deputy policy director for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed since 1997, when it grew from $4.25 to $5.15 over two years. It was introduced in 1938 and has moved up from $1 an hour in 1960. Adjusted for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its lowest levels since 1990.

Political experts say the minimum wage is an issue that helps Kerry and might be something he’ll work into Wednesday night’s presidential debate at Arizona State University, which is supposed to center on domestic issues. A recent Pew Research Center poll found 77 percent of Americans supported an increase in the minimum wage.

“If Kerry can, he will find a way to turn a question into a discussion about his plan for a minimum-wage hike. Raising it just sounds like a fair thing to do for most Americans, and they don’t think a dollar or two raise is a heap of money,” said Craig Ruff, president of Public Sector Consultants, a Lansing, Mich., public-policy analysis firm.

Economists are a bit like the Bush and Kerry campaigns, clashing over the value and impact of raising the minimum wage. Opponents say a hike always leads employers to cut their low-skill, low-paying jobs and therefore hurts the low-wage workers the hike was designed to help. They say it also hurts very small businesses.

Proponents say any job loss is overstated, especially since inflation has eroded the minimum wage over seven years. They also note the minimum wage is higher in other countries, such as Britain, where it is the equivalent of $8.46 an hour, and that minimum-wage workers also have poor or nonexistent health care plans.

Not surprisingly, business groups such as the National Federation of Business oppose a minimum-wage hike, while labor groups such as the AFL-CIO say it is overdue.

Here is a look at the arguments for and against a raise in the minimum wage:

For: Hike would help working women and lower-income families.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign says a hike in the minimum wage would predominantly help women, especially low-wage single women or working mothers. Economists estimate about 61 percent of people working at or near minimum wage are women, compared to 48 percent of the total work force.

An estimated 1.4 million working mothers would get a direct raise, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank, and another 3 million working mothers just above the $7-an-hour range could also see a raise.

“We think raising it would disproportionately help moms that work full time and have kids. That just makes sense to us,” said Furman, of the Kerry campaign. “You need to raise it so a mom who works full time at that wage is at least at the poverty level.”

A person working full time at minimum wage earns $10,700 a year. For a parent with two kids, the poverty line is $15,670 a year.

“Raising the minimum wage does push up wages at the bottom. It does, on the margins, increase salaries for low-wage women, who are often either the head of a single household or contribute a lot to the household’s earnings,” said Rebecca Blank, a University of Michigan economist and dean of the School of Public Policy. She is one of 563 economists who have called for a raise in the minimum wage to $7.

Against: Hike wouldn’t help low-income families that much.

Some economists argue that many minimum-wage workers are, in fact, suburban teenagers who live in financially stable homes, so raising the minimum wage wouldn’t aid low-income families, but teens looking for spare pocket money.

“The goal of the minimum wage is to reduce poverty, people as far back as President Kennedy said that, but if the hike helps teens in the suburbs, or a mom whose husband has a really good job, then it’s not really helping low-wage families,” said David Neumark, an economist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan economic think tank. “The effect on reducing poverty is probably pretty minimal.”

The Bush-Cheney campaign doesn’t make this specific argument. Their position, says Bailey, is that Bush supports “a reasonable proposal that phases it in over time,” but provides no specifics. Bush hasn’t pushed for a hike.

“The president is a champion for workers, but he’s waiting to see what Congress proposes,” said Bailey. Pressed for specifics, Bailey and a Bush-Cheney spokesperson said to contact the White House, which did not return a call from the Free Press.

For: Slow phase-in would limit impact on job creation.

Supporters say because the Senate bill would take more than two years to phase in, employers wouldn’t eliminate jobs because they’d have plenty of time to adjust to the higher wages. They also argue that because it’s been seven years since the last hike, employers are able to handle the increase.

“It would have very little employment effect. It would actually attract people who aren’t looking for work to get back on the employment rolls,” said Furman, the Kerry policy director. “It was raised in the early 1990s and then in late 1990s and both times the economy continued to thrive and so did small business.”

Furman acknowledged it’s a more uncertain economy now than when it was last hiked in 1997, but said, “Because employers have over two years to get used to the hike, they will be able to handle it.”

Supporters also say a higher minimum wage encourages people to enter the work force.

“You’ve got to have a high enough minimum wage, otherwise people will decide it’s more reasonable to collect public assistance or do illegal acts,” said Blank. She added that given a Republican Congress, any hike would probably be less than Kerry proposes.

Against: Any hike would eliminate some low-wage jobs.

This is the main argument of the Bush-Cheney campaign. They cite a Small Business Administration study in 1999 that found very small businesses – those with less than 100 people – showed less wage growth among low-wage workers than expected.

“Any raise has to be done in a way not to suppress job growth,” said Bailey. “We think this proposal could cost about 600,000 jobs, especially at small businesses. “

The Kerry proposal would raise the minimum wage 36 percent over the next two-plus years.

Economists agree that because it has been seven years since the last hike, the impact on employment would be less than if it had been done a few years ago. They also say the amount of the hike makes a difference.

“There is, to me, no doubt some low-wage jobs would be lost. But the government does a lot of things that limit jobs, like enforcing environmental laws. It’s a trade-off, and it’s not clear if this hike would truly reduce poverty,” said Neumark.