Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris has been making the rounds to promote the Obama Administration’s plan for raising the minimum wage from $7 to $9. In a new paper that compares strategies to improve the earnings of low-income households, we find that increasing the minimum wage would go a long way to help those in the bottom-third of the income distribution who are currently supported by sub-$9/hour earners. The higher minimum wage would boost these household’s earnings by about 19%.