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Objective: To examine changes in minimum wage associated with changes in women's weight status., Design: Longitudinal study of legislated minimum wage levels (per month, purchasing power parity-adjusted, 2011 constant US dollar values) linked to anthropometric and sociodemographic data from multiple Demographic and Health Surveys (2000-2014). Separate multilevel models estimated associations of a $10 increase in monthly minimum wage with the rate of change in underweight and obesity, conditioning on individual and country confounders. Post-estimation analysis computed predicted mean probabilities of being underweight or obese associated with higher levels of minimum wage at study start and end., Setting: Twenty-four low-income countries., Subjects: Adult non-pregnant women (n 150 796)., Results: Higher minimum wages were associated (OR; 95 % CI) with reduced underweight in women (0·986; 0·977, 0·995); a decrease that accelerated over time (P-interaction=0·025). Increasing minimum wage was associated with higher obesity (1·019; 1·008, 1·030), but did not alter the rate of increase in obesity prevalence (P-interaction=0·8). A $10 rise in monthly minimum wage was associated (prevalence difference; 95 % CI) with an average decrease of about 0·14 percentage points (-0·14; -0·23, -0·05) for underweight and an increase of about 0·1 percentage points (0·12; 0·04, 0·20) for obesity., Conclusions: The present longitudinal multi-country study showed that a $10 rise in monthly minimum wage significantly accelerated the decline in women's underweight prevalence, but had no association with the pace of growth in obesity prevalence. Thus, modest rises in minimum wage may be beneficial for addressing the protracted underweight problem in poor countries, especially South Asia and parts of Africa.

The authors of this article make a case for using Fink's (2013) taxonomy of significant learning in the economics classroom to improve standard-based economics education and to continue transforming the discipline to reduce social inequality along multiple dimensions, including gender, race, and class. Fink's framework is defined by student engagement with six distinct kinds of learning. Changes in student attitudes, changes in what students know about themselves and others, and learning how to learn in different settings are learning outcomes that are incorporated explicitly alongside acquiring new discipline-specific knowledge and skills. The authors apply Fink's taxonomy to a module on the minimum wage for principles of economics. They discuss potential activities and reflect on the benefits and challenges associated with using Fink's taxonomy.

Do minimum wages and the earned income tax credit (EITC) mitigate rising "deaths of despair?" We leverage state variation in these policies over time to estimate event study and difference-in-differences models of deaths due to drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related causes. Our causal models find no significant effects on drug or alcohol-related mortality, but do find significant reductions in non-drug suicides. A 10 percent minimum wage increase reduces non-drug suicides among low-educated adults by 2.7 percent, and the comparable EITC figure is 3.0 percent. Placebo tests and event-study models support our causal research design. Increasing both policies by 10 percent would likely prevent a combined total of more than 700 suicides each year.

The article discusses the effects of minimum wages on employment. It mentions that research focused on state data and followed either an industry case study approach exploiting geographical variation in the setting of minimum wages or a standard state panel route in which state effects were held constant. It also reveals that linear trends approach was initially criticized for its potential for bias stemming from the choice of sample period, and on the grounds that any post-treatment deviation in employment growth will attenuate an estimated static treatment.

This paper examines how the contemporary politics of the minimum wage came to focus on whether the minimum wage kills jobs. It begins by showing that the debates over the minimum wage shifted from an initial rhetoric in the 1930s that accepted the inevitability and in some cases desirability of unemployment in order to eliminate child labor and sweatshops and reconstruct the economy along high wage lines, to one where the existence of minimum wage–caused unemployment was called into question. Policymakers in the Department of Labor borrowed from the newfound authority of economics in the post-war American state to make the argument for substantial increases to the minimum wage in the 1950s and 1960s because they found that it had no negative effect on employment, but in so doing lashed the fate of the minimum wage to the empirical question of whether or not the minimum wage resulted in lower employment. In the 1970s and 1980s, the fate of the minimum wage was bound up by the question of the impact of the minimum wage on teenage employment. A new wave of external research by economists questioned the rosy findings of Department of Labor experts, pointing to teenagers as potentially bearing the economic brunt of minimum wage increases. This debate would be hashed out in the 1981 Minimum Wage Study Commission, as economic theory and policy rhetoric came together in the same place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

he authors investigate the employment consequences of minimum wage regulation for women in 16 OECD countries during 1970 to 2008. The treatment follows that of Neumark and Wascher's (2004)cross-country study using panel methods to estimate minimum wage effects among teenagers and young adults, although they focus on prime-age females-a group often neglected in the minimum wage literature. Moreover, their analysis covers a longer time interval and deploys time-varying policy and institutional regressors. They report average effects consistent with minimum wages causing material employment losses among the target group and, less conclusively, elevated joblessness as well. Their cross-country findings agree with Neumark and Wascher on the role of some individual labor market institutions and policies, but the authors do not observe the same patterns in the institutional data: specifically, prime-age females do not exhibit stronger employment losses in countries with the least regulated markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ride-hailing companies are disrupting transportation at a large scale while also providing economic opportunities to millions of drivers. Companies such as Uber and Lyft constantly promote potential earnings on the order of $25–$35 per hour. Yet, the advertised earnings do not account for factors such as time spent without passengers, the need to travel back-and-forth between areas of low and high ridership, driver residential location, or driving expenses. By examining a unique and detailed dataset collected using ethnographic methods – primary data collected by one of the authors who became an independent contractor to drive for both Uber and Lyft in the Denver area – we examine actual earnings with three common expense scenarios to answer the question of how much ride-hailing drivers actually earn. This study first assesses the cost per mile to passengers – including fare, fees, tolls, and gratuity – and finds that the result follows a power law function (in relation to trip distance) with a median cost of $2.50 per mile (not including value of time). We then assess driver earnings and estimate gross wages averaging $15.57 per hour. Given three common expense scenarios, we estimate net hourly wages ranging between $5.72 and $10.46 per hour before taxes. This suggests that most ride-hailing drivers earn less than the state minimum wage in Colorado. Our results also suggest that drivers are better off parking and waiting for the next ride request rather than driving to a more active location unless doing so cuts at least 30% of ride request waiting time. We then identify cruising and deadheading as negative externalities of ride-hailing and suggest per-mile ride-hailing fees, which start at zero passengers and provide discounts, based on increasing vehicle occupancy, to help mitigate this issue. While our data collection focused on the Denver region, ride-hailing rates and cost of living adjustments to specific cities can be used for comparison, providing insight into the individual economics for ride-hailing drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has found that places and people that are more economically disadvantaged have higher rates and risks, respectively, of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Economic disadvantages at the level of places and people, however, are themselves influenced by economic policies. To enhance the policy relevance of STI research, we explore, for the first time, the relationship between state-level minimum wage policies and STI rates among women in a cohort of 66 large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US spanning 2003–2015. Our annual state-level minimum wage measure was adjusted for inflation and cost of living. STI outcomes (rates of primary and secondary syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia per 100,000 women) were obtained from the CDC. We used multivariable hierarchical linear models to test the hypothesis that higher minimum wages would be associated with lower STI rates. We preliminarily explored possible socioeconomic mediators of the minimum wage/STI relationship (e.g., MSA-level rates of poverty, employment, and incarceration). We found that a $1 increase in the price-adjusted minimum wage over time was associated with a 19.7% decrease in syphilis rates among women and with an 8.5% drop in gonorrhea rates among women. The association between minimum wage and chlamydia rates did not meet our cutpoint for substantive significance. Preliminary mediation analyses suggest that MSA-level employment among women may mediate the relationship between minimum wage and gonorrhea. Consistent with an emerging body of research on minimum wage and health, our findings suggest that increasing the minimum wage may have a protective effect on STI rates among women. If other studies support this finding, public health strategies to reduce STIs among women should include advocating for a higher minimum wage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some employers are not obligated to pay at least minimum wages to all employees. U.S. farm employers comprise one of these groups. Employees of large farms and H-2A workers (lawfully admitted, nonimmigrant workers performing temporary or seasonal agricultural work) are protected by minimum wage legislation, while some migrant workers (often those paid piece rates) are exempt. U.S. agriculture also is characterized by a large percentage of unauthorized workers who may or may not earn above minimum wage. Following insights from dual labor market theory and from theories of the signaling capacity of the minimum wage, we compare labor market outcomes in the agricultural sector (where minimum wage coverage is limited) to low wage/skill non-agricultural sectors (where minimum wage coverage is more complete) nationally using data from the Current Population Survey. We then extend our analysis to a detailed state-level case study of agricultural workers in California using a representative survey of employed farm workers. Results suggest wage increases for covered workers that exceed those for uncovered workers, but insignificant differences in hours worked. This is the first study to our knowledge to examine the impacts of minimum wage coverage on agricultural workers relative to other workers for the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although leprosy is largely curable with multidrug therapy, incomplete treatment limits therapeutic effectiveness and is an important obstacle to disease control. To inform efforts to improve treatment completion rates, we aimed to identify the geographic and socioeconomic factors associated with leprosy treatment default in Brazil. Methodology/Principal findings: Using individual participant data collected in the Brazilian national registries for social programs and notifiable diseases and linked as part of the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort, we evaluated the odds of treatment default among 20,063 leprosy cases diagnosed and followed up between 2007 and 2014. We investigated geographic and socioeconomic risk factors using a multivariate hierarchical analysis and carried out additional stratified analyses by leprosy subtype and geographic region. Over the duration of follow-up, 1,011 (5.0%) leprosy cases were observed to default from treatment. Treatment default was markedly increased among leprosy cases residing in the North (OR = 1.57; 95%CI 1.25–1.97) and Northeast (OR = 1.44; 95%CI 1.17–1.78) regions of Brazil. The odds of default were also higher among cases with black ethnicity (OR = 1.29; 95%CI 1.01–1.69), no income (OR = 1.41; 95%CI 1.07–1.86), familial income ≤ 0.25 times Brazilian minimum wage (OR = 1.42; 95%CI 1.13–1.77), informal home lighting/no electricity supply (OR = 1.53; 95%CI 1.28–1.82), and household density of > 1 individual per room (OR = 1.35; 95%CI 1.10–1.66). Conclusions: The findings of the study indicate that the frequency of leprosy treatment default varies regionally in Brazil and provide new evidence that adverse socioeconomic conditions may represent important barriers to leprosy treatment completion. These findings suggest that interventions to address socioeconomic deprivation, along with continued efforts to improve access to care, have the potential to improve leprosy treatment outcomes and disease control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Leukemia is the most common cancer in children and has the highest rates of incidence in industrialized countries, followed by developing countries. This epidemiologic profile can mainly be attributed to the availability of diagnostic resources. In Brazil, leukemia diagnosis is a challenge due to financial viability, lack of hemovigilance services in isolated regions and the vast size of the territory. Its incidence in the state of Amazonas has been increasing since 2010. Therefore, this study aims to describe the epidemiological pattern and spatial distribution of patients with acute lymphoid leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia in Amazonas and identify the predictors of comorbidity and death. Materials and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was carried out based on patients’ data which was obtained from the database of a referral center for the period of 2005 to 2015. Variables included age, gender, ethnicity, civil status, schooling, income, location of residence, subtype of leukemia, comorbidities, and date of death. The spatial distribution was performed using QGIS v.2.18. Stata software was used for univariable and multivariable logistic regression to evaluate the association between both comorbidities and death for all characteristic groups of ALL and AML. Results: The group that was studied was composed of 577 ALL and 266 AML patients. For both, most patients were male, with a schooling period of 1–4 years, received<1 minimum wage, and lived mostly in Manaus, followed by the municipality of Tefé. There was no association between the development of comorbidities and analyzed variables in patients with ALL. AML patients that were >60 years old and with family history of the disease had the highest risk of developing comorbidities (OR = 5.06, p = 0.038; OR = 2.44, p = 0.041, respectively). Furthermore, patients with ALL and in the 41-50-year age group had a higher risk of death (OR = 31.12; p = 0.001). No association between death and explanatory variables were found in patients with AML. In addition, significant difference was observed in time to death (chi2 = 4,098.32, p = 0.000), with 50% of patients with AML dying within two years after diagnosis, whereas in ALL, this percentual of death only is reached in approximately 5 years. Conclusion: Our study describes the data of patients with acute leukemia in Amazonas, a remote region in the north of Brazil. In addition, it highlights the importance of hemovigilance in an Amazon region state, while focusing on peripheral areas which don't have prevention, diagnosis and treatment tools for this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the econometrics and the economics of past research on the effects of minimum wages on employment in the United States. My intent is to try to identify key questions raised in the recent literature, and some from the earlier literature, which I think hold the most promise for understanding the conflicting evidence and arriving at a more definitive answer about the employment effects of minimum wages. My secondary goal is to discuss how we can narrow the range of uncertainty about the likely effects of the large minimum wage increases becoming more prevalent in the United States. I discuss some insights from both theory and past evidence that may be informative about the effects of high minimum wages, and try to emphasize what research can be done now and in the near future to provide useful evidence to policymakers on the results of the coming high minimum wage experiment, whether in the United States or in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the Australian labour market continued to see only very moderate wages growth despite strong employment growth and low unemployment. This remains an international phenomenon with underlying economic and legal structural causes. Employment growth was concentrated in part-time jobs for both males and females, and in both manufacturing and white-collar industries. The Fair Work Commission increased the National Minimum Wage by 3.5%, a higher percentage increase than previous years but one that reflected higher growth in average earnings and inflation. The climate surrounding agreement making was less febrile than in recent years, with fewer high-profile attempts to terminate existing enterprise agreements. However, collective bargaining coverage in the private sector continues to decline to historic lows. Changes to skilled migration were the most significant shift in labour market policy in 2018, with a significant reduction in the number of permanent skilled migrants and a new temporary skilled migrant visa category with much stricter eligibility requirements. If sustained, this reduction may contribute to increasing pressure on wages in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2016, a US Department of Labor rule extending minimum wage and overtime pay protections to home care workers such as certified nursing assistants and home health aides survived its final legal challenge and became effective. However, Medicaid officials in certain states reported that during the intervening decades when these protections were not in place, their states had developed a range of innovative services and programs providing home care to people with disabilities—services and programs that would be at risk if workers were newly owed minimum wage and overtime pay. In this article, we examine whether the Department of Labor was right to extend these wage protections to home care workers even at the risk of a reduction in these home care services to people with disabilities. We argue that it was right to do so. Home care workers are entitled to these protections, and, although it is permissible under certain conditions for government to infringe workers' occupational rights and entitlements, these conditions are not satisfied in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-sectional study evaluated the quality of life and associated factors of climacteric women in Brazil using a random and representative sample of women assisted by primary care professionals. We investigated the variables using the Menopause-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire, MENQOL, whose mean scores were compared using Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests according to the sample characteristics. The variables associated with the outcomes in univariate analyses with a p≤0.2 were jointly evaluated using multiple linear regression. In this study, 849 women ranging in age from 40 to 65 years were evaluated. The predictors of poor quality of life in the vasomotor domain were women with severe climacteric symptoms (p<0.001), increased Body Mass Index (BMI) (p = 0.006), sleep (p = 0.022), and postmenopausal (p<0.001) alterations. For the psychosocial domain, the associated variables were severe climacteric symptoms (p<0.001) and sleep alterations (p<0.001); for the physical domain, the associated variables were severe climacteric symptoms (p<0.001), increased BMI (p<0.001), sleep (p<0.001), and postmenopausal (p<0.001) alterations. Severe climacteric symptoms, low sleep quality, increased BMI, and postmenopausal status were factors that were more associated with impairments in quality of life. With the increase in life expectancy, we suggest that greater attention should be paid to women’s quality of life associated with climacteric symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the labeling preferences of medication users and characterize their perceptions of the comprehensibility and readability of medication labels. Methods: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of medication users aged 18 years or older in 10 Brazilian capital cities. Perceptions of the comprehensibility and readability of medication labels in relation to sociodemographic characteristics were evaluated by Poisson regression models with robust variance. Labeling preferences were assessed through questions addressing possible improvements and through the use of digitally simulated packages. Results: Of 6,255 medication users interviewed, more than half found it difficult or very difficult to read (50.8%) and/or understand (52.0%) medication labels. Difficulties were more pronounced for participants aged 40 years or older, with lower levels of education, and non-whites. Increasing the font size (93.7%), describing the indications for use (95.9%) and contraindications (95.6%) on the label, and highlighting the expiration date (96.3%) were the most widely accepted improvements. In the evaluation of simulated packages, users preferred factors that improved readability, such as increased font size, use of graphic elements and color to highlight the concentration of the active ingredient, and contrast between the font color and background. The new simulated package design, with increased font size, color to highlight the concentration and contrast between the font color and background, was preferred over the standard design by 77.0% of participants. Conclusion: Based on users’ perceptions, increased font size and use of graphic elements and color to emphasize critical information, such as expiration date and concentration, are factors that contribute to making medication labels clearer to users. Pharmaceutical industries and policy makers should consider these items when developing labels and defining policies on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To quantify costs to patients of accessing HIV care prior to ART initiation. Materials and methods: Using a cross-sectional study design, costs incurred by HIV-positive patients prior to ART initiation were estimated at urban primary healthcare facilities in South Africa. Costs included direct costs, indirect (productivity) costs, carer and coping costs (value of assets sold and money borrowed). The percentage of individual income spent on healthcare was calculated and compared by patient income tertiles and CD4 count strata. Results: 289 patients (69% female, mean age 37 (SD: 10) years, median CD4 317 (IQR: 138–494) cells/mm3) were interviewed. The total mean monthly cost of pre-ART care was US$15.71. Indirect costs accounted for $2.59 (16.49%) of this when time was valued using the patient’s reported income. The mean monthly patient costs were $31.61, $12.78, $12.65 and $11.93 for those with a CD4 count <100, 101–350, 351–500 and >500 cells/mm3 respectively. The percentage of individual income spent on healthcare was 7.25% for those with a CD4 count <100 cells/mm3 and 4.05% for those with a CD4 count >500 cells/mm3. Conclusions: Despite the provision of charge-free services at public clinics, care prior to ART initiation can be costly, particularly for the poor and unemployed. Our study adds to the growing body of evidence that highlights the need to consider policies to reduce the economic barriers to HIV service access, particularly for low income or unwell patient groups, such as improving access to disability grants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For roughly the past three years, Indonesia's growth has maintained its slight upward trend while inflation has been broadly on target. The budget deficit has been kept under control and government debt is low relative to that of many other countries. Nevertheless, this sound macroeconomic performance is now under threat because the government's aversion to depreciation of the currency has led it to introduce unnecessary contractionary fiscal measures—including cutbacks of spending on infrastructure on which output growth depends. Along with many other currencies, the rupiah has depreciated significantly throughout much of 2018—despite the attempts of Bank Indonesia, the central bank, to prevent this—partly because of rapidly growing imports, but also because of a reversal of portfolio capital inflow. This reversal reflects various factors, including Bank Indonesia's policy, until recently, of pushing interest rates down while global interest rates have been rising; fear that rapid depreciation in poorly managed economies such as Turkey and Argentina may prove contagious; market recognition that expansion of the current account deficit is likely to require depreciation beyond that desired by the central bank; and concern that the forthcoming presidential election creates conditions in which it will be difficult to pursue sound economic policies. This survey discusses the rather unexpected currency depreciation and associated selling pressure in the stock exchange in detail before going on to provide evaluations of, and suggestions in relation to, a range of microeconomic policies, including infrastructure development; the provision of subsidised loans to small businesses; the fiscal aspects of decentralisation; minimum wages; and management of the bureaucracy. To a large extent, most of these policies can be characterised as reflecting a distrust of market forces, including a reluctance to adopt market-mimicking processes in the public sector—specifically, in relation to the funding of local governments, and to the staffing of the bureaucracy. From another perspective, the adoption of a wide variety of objectives for economic policy reflects the absence of any consistent analytical framework, making it highly likely that policies will turn out to be mutually inconsistent and, in particular, that they will conflict with the ultimate economic objective of increasing living standards, especially those of the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the prevalence of maternal dissatisfaction with their child's body size and its associated factors among mothers of first- to third-grade elementary school students in private schools in the Federal District, Brazil. This is a cross-sectional study with 548 mother-schoolchildren pairs. We measured children’s weight and height, and collected their mother’s sociodemographic data and Body Mass Index using an online questionnaire. We also verified maternal body dissatisfaction and maternal dissatisfaction with their child's body size using Shape Scales. Most mothers (50.5%) were dissatisfied with their child's body size. Mothers of boys (Adjusted OR = 2.85) were more likely to want a larger silhouette for their child, while mothers of girls (Adjusted OR = 3.18), overweight (Adjusted OR = 24.83) and obese (Adjusted OR = 189.86) children were more likely to want a thinner silhouette for their child. A positive correlation was observed between maternal dissatisfaction with their own body and maternal dissatisfaction with their children's body size (rs = 0.178). There was a high prevalence of maternal dissatisfaction with their child's body size, particularly among mothers of overweight and obese children. Additional studies should be conducted to better understand the influence of this dissatisfaction on maternal practices and attitudes related to their child’s body, food consumption, and lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]