Jamie Partridge

Do Minimum Wage Hikes Raise US Long Term Unemployment? Evidence Using State Minimum Wage Rates

PARTRIDGE M. D. and PARTRIDGE J. S. (1999) Do minimum wage hikes raise US long term unemployment? Evidence using state minimum wage rates, Reg. Studies 33 , 713‐726. Several recent studies have challenged the conventional notion that raising the minimum wage reduces employment. This study considers a related but relatively unexplored issue by examining the minimum wages influence on long durations of unemployment. By considering long term unemployment rates, this study extends the previous minimum wage literature by examining the persistence of minimum wage effects. The empirical analysis considers state data from the latter 1980s, a unique period when many states raised their minimum wage above the federal level. The results suggest that a greater minimum wage increases long term unemployment rates. Further evidence indicates that increased minimum wage coverage also raises long term unemployment rates. Subsequent analysis yielded similar patterns for other aggregate labour market measures. Thus, state ...

Factors affecting mental illness hospitalization rates: analysis of state-level panel data

Abstract Previous studies have shown that social conditions such as poverty may place large segments of the population at greater risk for mental illness. However, most studies have been very limited in time and scope. This study involves a state-level statistical analysis of economic and demographic factors that may influence rates of clients receiving inpatient mental health treatment in all organizations (excluding prisons) for selected years over a 12-year time period spanning most of the 1980s through the mid-1990s. Explanatory factors in our model include poverty, real per capita income, unemployment rate, age, race, education, and region-wide effects. Regression results indicate that poverty rates, real per capita income, and percent of the population age 20–24 are all significant and positively associated with the rate of clients receiving inpatient mental health treatment. Another finding of this study is that after accounting for all of the above factors, there still remain significant differences across Census Divisions in hospitalization rates for mental illness. For example, the Middle Atlantic states, East North Central states, and Pacific states have the highest share of inpatients and the New England states, Mountain states, and East South Central states have the lowest share of inpatients.