Full Citation
Title: Minimum Wages and Racial Infant Health Inequality: Evidence from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1966
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2023
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1966 increased the federal minimum wage in several industries previously excluded from federal minimum wage legislation. As a result of this act, the minimum wage increased to 1 USD in 1967 for workers in several previously excluded industries. These changes disproportionately affected Black workers, substantially narrowing the racial wage gap over a period of just a few years (Derenoncourt and Montialoux, 2021). In this paper, I use a difference-indifferences in differences approach to evaluate the effect of narrowing the racial wage gap on the racial infant mortality gap. I estimate the model at the county level, exploiting variation in industry employment shares as measured in the early 1960s. Intuitively, counties that pre-reform had higher shares of employment in industries affected by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1966 in this sense were more treated by the reform and experienced greater narrowing of the racial wage gap. Using employment shares from the 1960 Census, an increase in covered employment by one percentage point reduces the infant mortality gap by about 0.16 deaths per 1,000 births (or 1.2% of the mean racial infant mortality gap).
Url: http://katemusen.com/uploads/FLSA_paper.pdf
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Musen, Kate
Publisher:
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Health, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: