Sylvia Allegretto

Basic family budgets: working families' incomes often fail to meet living expenses around the United States.

The ability of families to meet their most basic needs is an important measure of economic stability and well-being. While poverty thresholds are used to evaluate the extent of serious economic deprivation in our society, family budgets—that is, the income a family needs to secure safe and decent-yet-modest living standards in the community in which it resides—offer a broader measure of economic welfare. Basic family budgets take into account differences in both geographic location and family type. In total, this report presents basic budgets for more than 400 U.S. communities and six family types (either one or two parents with one, two, or three children). That the budgets differ by location is important, since certain costs, such as housing, vary significantly depending on where one resides. This geographic dimension of family budget measurements offers a comparative advantage over using poverty thresholds, which only use a national baseline in their measurements.

Are Local Minimum Wages Absorbed by Price Increases? Estimates from Internet-Based Restaurant Menus:

The authors analyze 884 Internet-based restaurant menus from inside and outside San Jose, California, which they collected before and after the city implemented a 25% minimum wage increase in 2013. Their findings suggest that nearly all of the cost increase was passed through to consumers, as prices rose 1.45% on average. Minimum wage price elasticities averaged 0.058 for all restaurants and ranged from 0.044 to 0.109, depending on the type of restaurant. The authors’ estimate of payroll cost increases net of turnover savings is consistent with these findings. Equally important, border effects for restaurants are smaller than is often conjectured. Price differences among restaurants that are one-half mile from either side of the policy border are not competed away, indicating that restaurant demand is spatially inelastic. These results imply that citywide minimum wage policies need not result in substantive negative employment effects nor shifts of economic activity to nearby areas.

Seattle's Minimum Wage Experience 2015-16

This brief on Seattle’s minimum wage experience represents the first in a series that CWED will be issuing on the effects of the current wave of minimum wage policies — those that range from

The State of Working America, 2006/2007

12 to

The State of Working America, 2004/2005

15. Upcoming CWED reports will present similar studies of Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and New York City, among others. The timing of these reports will depend in part upon when quality data become available. We focus here on Seattle because it was one of the early movers. Seattle implemented the first phase of its minimum wage law on April 1, 2015, raising minimum wages from the statewide

How does teacher pay compare? : methodological challenges and answers

9.47 to

The Teaching Penalty:: Teacher Pay Losing Ground

10 or

Spatial Heterogeneity and Minimum Wages: Employment Estimates for Teens Using Cross-State Commuting Zones

11, depending upon business size, presence of tipped workers and employer provision of health insurance. The second phase began on January 1, 2016, further raising the minimum to four different levels, ranging from

The Truth about Public Employees in California: They Are neither Overpaid nor Overcompensated

10.50 to

Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data

13, again depending upon employer size, presence of tipped workers and provision of health insurance. The tip credit provision was introduced into a previously no tip credit environment. Any assessment of the impact of Seattle’s minimum wage policy is complicated by this complex array of minimum wage rates. This complexity continues in 2017, when the range of the four Seattle minimum wages widened, from