Minimum Wages and Homelessness

Seth J Hill
Additional contact information
Seth J Hill: University of California San Diego

No z2fqj, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: America's cities continue to struggle with homelessness. Here I offer a factor, the minimum wage, that adds to existing individual and structural explanations. If there are negative distributional consequences of minimum wages, they most likely harm the lowest-skill workers many of whom already face housing insecurity. To evaluate this argument, I study minimum wage changes in American cities and states 2006 to 2019. Using difference-in-differences methods for staggered treatments I find that minimum wage increases lead to increased point-in-time homeless population counts. Further analysis suggests disemployment and rental housing prices, but not migration, as mechanisms. Scholars and policymakers who aim to understand and combat homelessness should consider labor market opportunities. Distributional consequences of minimum wage laws also merit further inquiry.

Date: 2023-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/647e20b1bf3d0f0ab6d88297/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:z2fqj

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/z2fqj

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().