Effects of the Minimum Wage on Infant HealthGeorge Wehby, Dhaval Dave, Robert Kaestner
NBER Working Paper No. 22373 The minimum wage has increased in multiple states over the past three decades. We examine the impact of the state minimum wage on infant health. Using data on the universe of births in the US over 24 years, we find that an increase in the minimum wage is associated with an increase in birth weight driven by increased gestational length and fetal growth rate. The effect size is meaningful and plausible. We also find an increase in prenatal care use and a decline in smoking during pregnancy, which are some channels through which minimum wage can affect infant health. The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
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Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w22373 Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:
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