Working Paper: NBER ID: w11342
Authors: Scott Adams; David Neumark
Abstract: Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities without a law, and also permit the separate estimation of the effects of living wage laws and living wage campaigns. We find that living wage laws raise wages of low-wage workers but reduce employment among the least-skilled, especially when the laws cover business assistance recipients or are accompanied by similar laws in nearby cities.
Keywords: living wage; employment; wages; policy analysis
JEL Codes: J38; J58
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| living wage laws (J38) | wages of low-wage workers (J31) |
| living wage laws (J38) | employment among the least-skilled workers (F66) |