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When adjusted to reflect inflation, the federal minimum wage is almost 40 percent lower than it was in 1970. The Biden Administration tried and failed to legislatively raise the minimum wage, and political deadlock will continue to kill legislative change. The shareholder proposal, a nonbinding recommendation to management that shareholders can submit for a vote at a public corporation’s annual meeting, presents a path for improving the wages of many workers in the absence of federal legislation. This Note analyzes the best approach to crafting a shareholder proposal on minimum wage that will prompt an effective increase in the minimum wages paid to workers. It evaluates the barriers to success and concludes that the right team of actors can overcome the barriers to raise the minimum wages paid to workers at large corporations through shareholder proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen: El salario mínimo ha sido una cuestión controvertida desde que se in‐trodujo en la legislación de Australia, los Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido a principios del siglo XX. Los defensores del salario mínimo justifican la intervención estatal basándose en principios de equidad y bien social, mientras que sus detractores se amparan en la teoría del mercado. En este artículo se examina la influencia de estas dos posiciones ideológicas en la fijación de los salarios, y los consiguientes resultados de una y otra. El objetivo es colmar la falta de estudios comparativos sobre los orígenes, la evolución y los actuales sistemas de reglamentación del salario mínimo en los tres países. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shortage of home health aides has been exacerbated in recent years partially because of low wages. Minimum wage (MW) policy changes may alleviate this workforce shortage. This study examined the effects of MW policies on wages and employment of home health aides. We performed a county-level longitudinal analysis using 2012 to 2018 national data. The study cohort included 2,496 counties and focused on all workers in the home health industry. Outcome variables included wages and the employment of home health aides. Key variables of interest included the consumer price index adjusted state MW and a set of variables that captured the effect of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) extension. This study found that home health aides' hourly wages were $1.00 higher (p =.011) in states that increased their MWs from below $8 to above $10. The FLSA extension was associated with $1.15 higher wages in states with higher MWs (i.e., state MW above $10 in 2014). The FLSA extension was associated with higher employment of home health aides in less-competitive markets, rather than high- or average-competitive markets. This study suggests that state MW increases combined with the FLSA extension may help maintain the current home health workforce and improve their wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children in poverty are at significantly greater risk of experiencing child maltreatment. Family economic security policies, such as minimum wage laws, offer a promising prevention strategy to support low-income families. This study utilized data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study, to examine the effect of changes in state-specific minimum wage laws on maternal self-reported child maltreatment and material hardship as it varies by developmental age of the child. A series of fixed effects models with an interaction between the minimum wage and the age of the focal child were used to estimate if there was variation by developmental period of the impact of minimum wage laws on the following outcome variables: all domains of child maltreatment, maternal work-related stress, reported material hardship, aggravation in parenting, and maternal depression. Results revealed significant effects of increased minimum wage on maternal self-reported child neglect and material hardship when children are 3 years of age, and this relationship became non-significant as children aged. No effect was observed by age for other forms of child maltreatment nor any other outcome variables. Study findings suggest minimum wage laws may have differential effects on child neglect depending on the developmental period in which they are received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The goal of this study was to estimate how state preemption laws that prohibit local authority to raise the minimum wage or mandate paid sick leave have contributed to working-age mortality from suicide, homicide, drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, and transport accidents.Methods: County-by-quarter death counts by cause and sex for 1999-2019 were regressed on minimum wage levels and hours of paid sick-leave requirements, controlling for time-varying covariates and place- and time-specific fixed effects. The model coefficients were then used to predict expected reductions in mortality if the preemption laws were repealed. Analyses were conducted during January 2022-April 2022.Results: Paid sick-leave requirements were associated with lower mortality. These associations were statistically significant for suicide and homicide deaths among men and for homicide and alcohol-related deaths among women. Mortality may decline by more than 5% in large central metropolitan counties currently constrained by preemption laws if they were able to mandate a 40-hour annual paid sick-leave requirement.Conclusions: State legislatures' preemption of local authority to enact health-promoting legislation may be contributing to the worrisome trends in external causes of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Low wages are associated with an increased risk of occupational injuries. Increasing the minimum wage is one way to increase workers' wages; however, a previous study found that higher state minimum wage was associated with an increase in nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses. This study aims to examine the association between state minimum-wage laws and fatal occupational injuries.Methods: Fatal occupational injury data (2003-2017) for the 50 U.S. states were obtained from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. State minimum-wage law information was obtained from Temple's LawAtlas website. Linear and Poisson regression models were used to analyze the association between state minimum-wage laws and the rates of fatal occupational injury per 100,000 workers. All data were analyzed in 2020.Results: Having a state minimum wage higher than the federal minimum had no statistically significant association with fatal occupational injury rate, (-4.0%, 95% CI= -9.1, 1.5). State minimum wage amount was also not associated with fatal occupational injuries (-4.0%, 95% CI= -9.1, 1.5).Conclusions: Although previous research suggested that state minimum-wage laws were associated with increased rates of nonfatal occupational injuries, these findings indicate that these laws are not associated with an increased risk of fatal occupational injuries. Concerns that raising the minimum wage will lead to worse workplace safety may be unfounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document addresses the proposed law in the United States to increase the minimum wage in that country to 15 dollars per hour in 2025. It analyzes the implications of passing this law and provides several well-founded arguments in its favor. Likewise, it refutes those assertions that have been made by various instances against an increase in the minimum wage. It concludes that passing this law not only brings great benefits to the country's economy, but is also really necessary to combat income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper finds that minimum wages of the United States and Mexico measured carefully in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) help explain the well-documented post-2010 fall in Mexico-U.S. migration. Declining inequality also plays a role since the purchasing power of the minimum wage increased relative to the average wage in Mexico. Using time-series data, we find two positive partial correlations between minimum wages and net migration: one driven by wage differentials between the two countries and the other by wage inequality in Mexico. However, these results are found to be mediated through migrant social networks. Though relative wages are a classic migration driver, this paper is the first to explore the full minimum-average wage nexus. One clear policy implication of these results is that maintaining the real purchasing power of minimum wages helps reduce migration. An in-depth analysis is needed to demonstrate the causality of these correlations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the high hopes for the program when it was created in 1938, AbilityOne is in direct conflict with modern disability rights policy. For nonprofits to qualify for this government procurement program, they must have seventy-five percent of their direct labor hours be performed by people with disabilities. As a result, the AbilityOne program is the largest employer of people with disabilities in the country. However, it promotes unnecessary segregation, prevents people with disabilities from seeking competitive positions, and overly relies on paying a subminimum wage. The federal government, states, and even some participating nonprofits have been promoting efforts to help people with disabilities obtain competitive, integrated employment. Yet that goal is far off unless Congress reforms the AbilityOne program to comply with the policy standards Congress has set. This Note recommends that Congress follow Vermont's example and phase out the AbilityOne Program. Congress should establish a new collateral socio-economic policy requiring federal contractors to hire AbilityOne nonprofit agencies as employment support providers for employees with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States adopt minimum wages to improve workers' economic circumstances and well-being. Many studies, but not all, find evidence of health benefits from higher minimum wages. This study used a rigorous "triple difference" strategy to identify the associations between state minimum wages and adult obesity, body mass index (weight (kg)/height (m)2), hypertension, diabetes, fair or poor health, and serious psychological distress. National Health Interview Survey data (United States, 2008–2015) on adults aged 25–64 years (n  = 131,430) were linked to state policies to estimate the prevalence odds ratio or mean difference in these outcomes associated with a $1 increase in current and 2-year lagged minimum wage among less-educated adults overall and by sex, race/ethnicity, and age. In contrast to prior studies, there was no association between current minimum wage and health; however, 2-year lagged minimum wage was positively associated with the likelihood of obesity (prevalence odds ratio = 1.08, 95% confidence interval: 1.00, 1.16) and with elevated body mass index (mean difference = 0.27, 95% confidence interval: 0.04, 0.49). In subgroup models, current and 2-year lagged minimum wage were associated with a higher likelihood of obesity among male and non-White or Hispanic adults. The associations with hypertension also varied by sex and the timing of the exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of place-based policies are still under debate. In this study, we analyze what is probably one of the boldest interventions in the recent history of Mexico and the rest of the world: the Northern Border Free Zone (NBFZ). Launched in January 2019, this program doubles the minimum wage and substantially lowers taxes in 43 municipalities along the border with the United States, aiming to improve living standards for low-wage workers and foster economic activity within the region. Given the unique features of the NBFZ, we estimate its short-run effects on labor outcomes: employment, wages, and formality. Our primary identification strategy follows a synthetic control method employing monthly administrative data at the municipality level for the period 2015–2019. Using administrative data for formal employment, we find that the policy substantially increased labor income in the NBFZ by approximately 9% over the control municipalities. The results for employment are less clear. Formal employment showed 1.6% less growth in the NBFZ than in the control municipalities, but the estimate is imprecise and we cannot reject a null impact of the program on employment. These results are robust to alternative control groups, including metropolitan areas in the United States. We also use the labor force survey to estimate the effects on formality at the individual level and find results closer to a null effect. These two results suggest that the NBFZ did not substantially affect employment, and the intersection of confidence intervals for the two estimates implies a maximum loss of employment of approximately 24,000 jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing evidence suggests that state policies impact constituents' health, but political determinants of health and health inequities remain understudied. Using state and year fixed-effects models, we determined the extent to which changes in electoral partisan bias in lower chambers of U.S. state legislatures (i.e., discrepancy between statewide vote share and seat share) were followed by changes in five state policies affecting children and families (1980–2019) and a composite of safety net programs (1999–2018). We examined effects on each policy and whether the effect was modified when bias was accompanied by unified party control. Next, we determined whether the effect differed depending on which party it favored. Less bias resulted only in higher AFDC/TANF benefits. Both pro-Democratic and pro-Republican bias was followed by decreased AFDC/TANF benefits and increased Medicaid benefits. AFDC/TANF recipients, unemployment benefits, minimum wage, and pre-K-12 education spending increased following pro-Democratic bias and decreased following pro-Republican bias. Estimated effects on the composite measure of safety net policies were all close to null. Some effects were modulated by unified party control. Results demonstrate that increasing fairness in elections is not a panacea by itself for increasing generosity of programs affecting children's well-being. Indeed, bias can be somewhat beneficial for the expansiveness of some policies. Furthermore, with the exception of unemployment benefits and AFDC/TANF recipients, Democrats have not been using the additional power that comes with electoral bias to spend more on major programs that benefit children. Finally, after decades in which electoral bias was in Democrats' favor, bias has started to shift toward Republicans in the last decade. This trend forecasts more cuts in almost all the policies in this study, especially education and AFDC/TANF recipients. There is a need for more research and advocacy emphasis on the political determinants of social determinants of health, especially at the state level. • Changes in partisan bias are followed by changes in 5 policies affecting children. • Less electoral bias 1980–2019 resulted only in higher AFDC/TANF benefits. • Changes in other policies depended on which party the bias favored. • More research and advocacy are needed on political determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of place-based policies are still under debate. In this study, we analyze what is probably one of the boldest interventions in the recent history of Mexico and the rest of the world: the Northern Border Free Zone (NBFZ). Launched in January 2019, this program doubles the minimum wage and substantially lowers taxes in 43 municipalities along the border with the United States, aiming to improve living standards for low-wage workers and foster economic activity within the region. Given the unique features of the NBFZ, we estimate its short-run effects on labor outcomes: employment, wages, and formality. Our primary identification strategy follows a synthetic control method employing monthly administrative data at the municipality level for the period 2015–2019. Using administrative data for formal employment, we find that the policy substantially increased labor income in the NBFZ by approximately 9% over the control municipalities. The results for employment are less clear. Formal employment showed 1.6% less growth in the NBFZ than in the control municipalities, but the estimate is imprecise and we cannot reject a null impact of the program on employment. These results are robust to alternative control groups, including metropolitan areas in the United States. We also use the labor force survey to estimate the effects on formality at the individual level and find results closer to a null effect. These two results suggest that the NBFZ did not substantially affect employment, and the intersection of confidence intervals for the two estimates implies a maximum loss of employment of approximately 24,000 jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, researchers have disputed the mixed evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment in the United States. Whenever the minimum wage has positive or no effects on employment, they appeal to monopsony models to explain their results. However, very few of these studies have empirically tested whether their results are due to monopsonistic characteristics in the labor markets. In this article, I estimate the effects of the minimum wage for the United States under concentrated labor markets and low-mobility jobs (two variables that measure monopsony), identify heterogeneous effects among different scenarios derived from the monopsony model, and provide a plausible explanation of the mixed results about the minimum wage effects in the literature. My main findings indicate that minimum wages have an elasticity to teenage employment of -0.418 under perfect competition, which is, as expected, much higher than the usual results in the literature. If the monopsony variable is one standard deviation higher than the baseline, it implies a positive change in elasticity of 0.05. The minimum wage has a positive insignificant effect between 0.04 and 0.29 under full monopsonistic labor markets. The results are consistent among different specifications and in controlling for possible external shocks and omitted variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, researchers have disputed the mixed evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment in the United States. Whenever the minimum wage has positive or no effects on employment, they appeal to monopsony models to explain their results. However, very few of these studies have empirically tested whether their results are due to monopsonistic characteristics in the labor markets. In this article, I estimate the effects of the minimum wage for the United States under concentrated labor markets and low-mobility jobs (two variables that measure monopsony), identify heterogeneous effects among different scenarios derived from the monopsony model, and provide a plausible explanation of the mixed results about the minimum wage effects in the literature. My main findings indicate that minimum wages have an elasticity to teenage employment of −0.418 under perfect competition, which is, as expected, much higher than the usual results in the literature. If the monopsony variable is one standard deviation higher than the baseline, it implies a positive change in elasticity of 0.05. The minimum wage has a positive insignificant effect between 0.04 and 0.29 under full monopsonistic labor markets. The results are consistent among different specifications and in controlling for possible external shocks and omitted variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The article clarifies the wage–employment relation in a developing country. Several years ago, many articles in the United States indicated that the relation between increasing wages and increasing unemployment is unclear. These articles from the United States are insufficient to be applicable to all countries, especially developing countries such as Colombia where institutions and the wage–employment relation differ from those in the United States. Design/methodology/approach: A meta-analysis methodology was used as 28 estimates of long-run wage–employment elasticity in Colombia from 1998 to 2016 were analyzed. Findings: This article provides insights into how real wages affect employment. Despite publication biases, results showed that a 1% increase in wages results in a 0.11% decline in employment in the long run. Research limitations/implications: Due to the publication bias, it is not considered how variables such as sectors, estimation strategies (panel data, partial adjustment, cointegration and non-linear least squares, among others), formal/informal urban sectors, government services and transportation, and qualified and unskilled workers affect the true elasticity value. Practical implications: This paper includes implications for public policy because the results are important to minimum wages policy in a developing country. Originality/value: There are no studies regarding the wage–employment relation in a developing country. The empirical results obtained in this article are useful for regulators, policy makers and researchers to understand whether employment is affected by real wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of place-based policies are still under debate. In this study, we analyze what is probably one of the boldest interventions in the recent history of Mexico and the rest of the world: the Northern Border Free Zone (NBFZ). Launched in January 2019, this program doubles the minimum wage and substantially lowers taxes in 43 municipalities along the border with the United States, aiming to improve living standards for low-wage workers and foster economic activity within the region. Given the unique features of the NBFZ, we estimate its short-run effects on labor outcomes: employment, wages, and formality. Our primary identification strategy follows a synthetic control method employing monthly administrative data at the municipality level for the period 2015–2019. Using administrative data for formal employment, we find that the policy substantially increased labor income in the NBFZ by approximately 9% over the control municipalities. The results for employment are less clear. Formal employment showed 1.6% less growth in the NBFZ than in the control municipalities, but the estimate is imprecise and we cannot reject a null impact of the program on employment. These results are robust to alternative control groups, including metropolitan areas in the United States. We also use the labor force survey to estimate the effects on formality at the individual level and find results closer to a null effect. These two results suggest that the NBFZ did not substantially affect employment, and the intersection of confidence intervals for the two estimates implies a maximum loss of employment of approximately 24,000 jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly 40% of agricultural workers in the United States earn an hourly wage that is within 10% of the prevailing state‐level minimum wage. We evaluate the impact of the minimum wage on farm employment using county‐level data from the United States Census of Agriculture. We employ long‐differences specifications and find evidence of a dynamic, negative effect of the minimum wage on seasonal agricultural employment, but no effect on year‐round agricultural employment. We estimate a long‐run elasticity of total agricultural employment with respect to the minimum wage of about −0.40, which is both statistically and economically significant. Employers' total expenditures on hired agricultural workers are not affected by the minimum wage. Finally, our analysis suggests that increases in minimum wages may lead to higher capital investment as well as the consolidation of farming operations in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, researchers have disputed the mixed evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment in the United States. Whenever the minimum wage has positive or no effects on employment, they appeal to monopsony models to explain their results. However, very few of these studies have empirically tested whether their results are due to monopsonistic characteristics in the labor markets. In this article, I estimate the effects of the minimum wage for the United States under concentrated labor markets and low-mobility jobs (two variables that measure monopsony), identify heterogeneous effects among different scenarios derived from the monopsony model, and provide a plausible explanation of the mixed results about the minimum wage effects in the literature. My main findings indicate that minimum wages have an elasticity to teenage employment of −0.418 under perfect competition, which is, as expected, much higher than the usual results in the literature. If the monopsony variable is one standard deviation higher than the baseline, it implies a positive change in elasticity of 0.05. The minimum wage has a positive insignificant effect between 0.04 and 0.29 under full monopsonistic labor markets. The results are consistent among different specifications and in controlling for possible external shocks and omitted variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand the tight post-pandemic labor market in the United States we decompose the decline in aggregate hours worked into the extensive (fewer people working) and the intensive margin changes (workers working fewer hours). Although the pre-existing trend of lower labor force participation especially by young men without a bachelor’s degree accounts for some of the decline in aggregate hours, the intensive margin accounts for more than half of the decline between 2019 and 2022. The decline in hours among workers was larger for men than women. Among men, the decline was larger for those with a bachelor’s degree than those with less education, for prime-age workers than older workers, and also for those who already worked long hours and had high earnings. Workers’ hours reduction can explain why the labor market is even tighter than what is expected at the current levels of unemployment and labor force participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article directly and bluntly challenges traditional thought by casting aside conventional wisdom regarding the national economy, replacing it with Modern Political Economy and Public Policy. American national policies, I argue, should always, whenever possible, be universal, not targeted toward specific groups. Moreover, policies need to be crafted to achieve their goals, not to fit within budgetary constraints. The least government is the worst, not the best, and a miserly approach to spending is not "wise use of the taxpayers' dollars." The national government controls the currency, paying its bills in dollars. It issues dollars as needed, in whatever amount it chooses, and is unrestrained by the need to "find the money" or "pay-as-you-go." Taxes are useful for purposes of regulation and control of income inequality, but are not relevant to expenditures. "Anything that is technically feasible," I claim following Kelton and coauthors, "is financially affordable," and there is no need to fear inflation so long as spending does not exceed the productive capacity of the economy. Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, and regardless of the widely used jargon of politicians, when government spends, it is not using "The Taxpayers' Money." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The objective of the current study is to examine the determinants of wage floors set by state governments in the United States, with a particular focus on the effects of income inequality and ethnic diversity. Method: We estimate the effects of income inequality, ethnic diversity, and their interaction on real state minimum wages using a state‐level panel of Census demographic data from 1981 to 2010. We also control for state‐level demographics and additional state‐level information, such as measures of voter and government liberalism, along with time and state fixed effects. Results: We find that the impact of income inequality is mediated by ethnic diversity. When states are highly ethnically homogeneous, increases in income inequality are associated with higher state minimum wages. When states are highly ethnically heterogeneous, increases in income inequality are associated with lower state minimum wages. The impact of income inequality lacks statistical significance when levels of ethnic diversity are either average or somewhat below average. Conclusions: Overall, our results suggest that the negative impact on state minimum wages in heterogeneous states could stem from rising income inequality, which increases the social distance between whites and other ethnic groups and weakens mass support for wage policies that are believed by the public to be beneficial to the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the need for fundamental labor law reform in the U.S. to fix labor and employment regime and to address economic and political inequality. Topics discussed include the passage of the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act to set minimum wages on an industry-by-industry basis and the U.S. National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), protection of workers under the employment law, growing support among union leaders, policymakers, and academics for labor law, and teacher strikes in Los Angeles, California, West Virginia, Arizona, Colorado, and Oklahoma.

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]

Introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) met steady, organized resistance on its ultimately failed political journey that ended in 1982, just three states shy of ratification. For many female stakeholders in the protracted ERA controversy, support or opposition for the amendment hinged largely on the anticipated effect the amendment would have on existing labor protections for women. This essay explicates rhetorical shifts and continuities within the ERA controversy stemming from its storied relationship to debates over protective legislation. An analysis of the pro-ERA National Woman's Party's weekly newspaper Equal Rights and the anti-ERA Women's Trade Union League's newsletter Life and Labor Bulletin traces these prominent stakeholders' active battle over what constituted "protection" and "equal rights." Thus, this essay complicates the rhetorical history of the ERA, illuminating how constituencies on all sides of the debate claimed to best represent the interests of working women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship in the U.S. provides mounting evidence of a linkage between economic inequality and inequality in representation and policymaking. In response, this article addresses a research question striking at the very heart of the resilience of the democratic capitalist design: Do voters punish elected officials for inequality? We advance the argument that voter punishment of incumbents for inequality will occur when inequality is locally salient and for officeholders that support inequality-enhancing legislation. Relying upon secondary analysis of large-N national survey data, we find that voters residing in high inequality contexts voted against incumbents who supported regressive tax policies and opposed minimum wage increases. Interestingly, for inequality-attenuating incumbents, we find increased support among voters in high inequality contexts. Importantly, robustness checks reveal that observed punishment effects hold for Democratic and Republican incumbents. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for American democracy in an era of rising inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To investigate racial/ethnic and gender inequities in the compensation and benefits of US health care workers and assess the potential impact of a $15-per-hour minimum wage on their economic well-being. Methods. Using the 2017 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, we compared earnings, insurance coverage, public benefits usage, and occupational distribution of male and female health care workers of different races/ethnicities. We modeled the impact of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour with different scenarios for labor demand. Results. Of female health care workers, 34.9% of earned less than $15 per hour. Nearly half of Black and Latina female health care workers earned less than $15 per hour, and more than 10% lacked health insurance. A total of 1.7 million female health care workers and their children lived in poverty. Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would reduce poverty rates among female health care workers by 27.1% to 50.3%. Conclusions. Many US female health care workers, particularly women of color, suffer economic privation and lack health insurance. Achieving economic, gender, and racial/ethnic justice will require significant changes to the compensation structure of health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate evidence for the effectiveness of raising minimum wages on various measures of public health within the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe. We search four scientific websites from the inception of the research through May 20, 2018. We find great variety (20+) in measured outcomes among the 33 studies that pass our initial screening. We establish quality standards in a second screening resulting in 15 studies in which we create outcome-based groups. Outcomes include four broad measures (general overall health, behavior, mental health, and birth weight) and eight narrow measures (self-reported health, "bad" health days, unmet medical need, smoking, problem-drinking, obesity, eating vegetables, and exercise). We establish criteria for "stronger" findings for outcomes and methods. Stronger findings include: $1 increases in minimum wages are associated with 1.4 percentage point (4% evaluated at mean) decreases in smoking prevalence; failure to reject null hypotheses that minimum wages have no effects for most outcomes; and no consistent evidence that minimum wages harm health. One "suggestive" finding is that the best-designed studies have well-defined treatment (or likely affected) and control (unaffected) groups and contain longitudinal data. The major methodological weaknesses afflicting many studies are the lack of focus on persons likely affected by minimum wages and omission of "falsification tests" on persons likely unaffected. An additional weakness is lack of attention to how findings might differ across populations such as teenagers, adults, men, women, continuously employed and unemployed persons. Research into health effects of minimum wages is in its infancy and growing rapidly. We present a list of "better practices" for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the decision by the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court to reverse a dismissal a claim of racial discrimination based on statistical and historical evidence in the case of Lewis v. Governor of Alabama, which involved state legislation in Alabama concerning an ordinance passed by the Birmingham, Alabama, City Council pertaining to the minimum wage.

In this paper, I argue that exceptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act permitting the use of prison labor at sub-minimum wages are a form of legalized race discrimination. This discrimination is the result of: firmly entrenched structures of oppression that lead to the incarceration of people of color, particularly men of color, at markedly higher rates than white people; prison job training programs that exploit prisoners' labor for the benefit of corporations without noticeably improving prisoners' job prospects upon their release; and hiring trends outside of prison that clearly disfavor formerly incarcerated and nonwhite workers. Corporations that choose to use prison labor generally compartmentalize tasks performed by prison workers and those performed by civilian workers along the same lines used to classify "white" and "non-white" jobs prior to the enactment of Title VII. The tasks reserved for prisoners under this system are generally lower wage, lower skilled manufacturing jobs, while those reserved for civilian workers come with higher wages, more skilled tasks, and are more likely to be customer-facing. The result is that companies frequently choose to assign the least desirable, most menial tasks to prison workers, a group primarily made up of people of color, while these same companies hire predominantly white civilian workers to perform higher-skill jobs. This trend is actually magnified in jurisdictions that have "banned the box,"1 where employers are hiring fewer Black and Latinx workers than they hired when permitted to ask about criminal records on application paperwork. This amplifies the discriminatory effects of this statutory loophole.2 This counterintuitive outcome suggests that, rather than providing additional opportunities for formerly incarcerated workers, employers are reacting to these laws by treating race as a proxy for criminal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the gig economy's critics and supporters tend to assume that it represents an assault on current employment structures. Comparative theory, however, emphasizes that legal regimes are durable in the face of new challenges. Fortunately, the gig economy's prevalence throughout the world gives scholars the chance to evaluate this tension. This paper analyzes whether platform work undermines existing legal systems by testing two comparative theories in the United States and France. The first predicts that French law should mobilize against platform firms to protect producers' livelihoods and that American law should embrace these services for lowering consumer prices. The second forecasts that French welfare institutions should more aggressively safeguard gig workers' wellbeing than their American counterparts. Surprisingly, the results show that neither hypothesis holds. Though France initially fought companies like Uber to preserve taxi drivers' advantages, it began adopting a more consumer-friendly stance toward the sector after its 2017 elections. The United States, meanwhile, has become a site of mounting resistance to the way platform firms treat their workers. Furthermore, while U.S. social programs have done little to shield platform workers from market forces, those in France have evinced similar features; both countries have denied these laborers basic assurances such as a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation. These findings suggest that the gig economy embodies a significant challenge to long-standing legal regimes-one that could even cause dissimilar nations to converge in the coming years. Lawmakers will need to devote more attention to the plight of workers caught in what appears to be a fundamental legal reordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the end of 2016, an unprecedented 25.4 million refugees were forced from their homes, 16% of whom have resettled in the United States of America. Among them are thousands of highly-skilled professionals who may never return to their trained professions or find work that pays more than minimum wage. Refugees who are determined to continue their professions are advised to control their expectations: they are almost always placed in survival jobs and face significant challenges in practicing their professions, especially foreign credential recognition. Yet Article 19 of the 1951 Refugee Convention legally obligates the U.S. government to respect and uphold refugees' fundamental right to practice liberal professions. Fulfillment of this duty requires the federal and state governments to adopt laws and systems that give refugees favorable treatment in both the exercise of professions and credential recognition--the two key considerations in Article 19. Despite giving refugees some employment and employability services soon after arrival, the United States fails to substantively comply with Article 19. The freedom of refugees to practice their professions is severely undermined by a panoply of state and federal laws and policies, which make it difficult for refugee professionals to re-credential. Inconsistencies in state re-credentialing laws, federal "quick employment" objectives, and underfunding of employment services perpetuate the underemployment of highly-skilled refugees: there are engineers driving Uber, doctors washing dishes, and teachers cleaning houses. To de facto protect these refugees' right of professional practice, this Comment proposes a national standard of treatment and credential recognition practices that will give refugees a more meaningful opportunity for re-credentialing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite substantial declines since the 1960's, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States (US) and geographic disparities in heart disease mortality have grown. State-level socioeconomic factors might be important contributors to geographic differences in heart disease mortality. This study examined the association between state-level minimum wage increases above the federal minimum wage and heart disease death rates from 1980 to 2015 among 'working age' individuals aged 35-64 years in the US. Annual, inflation-adjusted state and federal minimum wage data were extracted from legal databases and annual state-level heart disease death rates were obtained from CDC Wonder. Although most minimum wage and health studies to date use conventional regression models, we employed marginal structural models to account for possible time-varying confounding. Quasi-experimental, marginal structural models accounting for state, year, and state × year fixed effects estimated the association between increases in the state-level minimum wage above the federal minimum wage and heart disease death rates. In models of 'working age' adults (35-64 years old), a $1 increase in the state-level minimum wage above the federal minimum wage was on average associated with ~6 fewer heart disease deaths per 100,000 (95% CI: -10.4, -1.99), or a state-level heart disease death rate that was 3.5% lower per year. In contrast, for older adults (65+ years old) a $1 increase was on average associated with a 1.1% lower state-level heart disease death rate per year (b = -28.9 per 100,000, 95% CI: -71.1, 13.3). State-level economic policies are important targets for population health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, research evaluating the association between minimum wage and health has been heterogenous and varies based on the specific subpopulation or health outcomes under evaluation while associations across racial, ethnic, and gender identities have been understudied. A triple difference-in-differences strategy using modified Poisson regression was used to evaluate the associations between minimum wage and obesity, hypertension, fair or poor general health, and moderate psychological distress in 25–64-year-old adults with a high school education/GED or less. Data from the 1999–2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics was linked to state policies and characteristics to estimate the risk ratio (RR) associated with a $1 increase in current and 2-year lagged state minimum wages overall and by race, ethnicity, and gender (non-Hispanic or non-Latino (NH) White men, NH White women, Black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) men, and BIPOC women) adjusting for individual and state-level confounding. No associations between minimum wage and health were observed overall. Among NH White men 2-year lagged minimum wage was associated with reduced risk of obesity (RR = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.67, 0.99). Among NH White women, current minimum wage was associated lower risk of moderate psychological distress (RR = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.54, 1.00) while 2-year lagged minimum wage was associated with higher obesity risk (RR = 1.35, 95% CI = 1.12, 1.64) and lower risk of moderate psychological distress (RR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.56, 1.00). Among BIPOC women, current minimum wage was associated with higher risk of fair or poor health (RR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.02, 1.40). No associations were observed among BIPOC men. While no associations were observed overall, heterogeneous associations between minimum wage, obesity, and psychological distress by racial, ethnic, and gender strata warrant further study and have implications for health equity research. • No associations between minimum wage and health observed among US adults overall. • Higher minimum wages linked to lower obesity risk in non-Hispanic White men. • Minimum wage increases linked to higher obesity risk in non-Hispanic White women. • Higher minimum wages linked to better mental health in non-Hispanic White women. • Minimum wage associated with greater risk of fair or poor health in women of color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]