Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities...

Many cities in the United States have recently passed living wage ordinances. These ordinances typically mandate that businesses under contract with the city or, in some cases, receiving assistance from the city, must pay their workers a wage sufficient to support a family financially. To date,...

This article explores the effects of living wages on low-wage workers and low-income families. First, earlier analyses are updated using data for 1996 through 2002, and a number of criticisms of those analyses are addressed. This article confirms earlier findings that business-assistance living...

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities...

Living wage ordinances typically mandate that businesses under contract with a city or, in some cases, receiving assistance from a city, must pay their workers a wage sufficient to support a family financially. We estimate the effects of these ordinances on wages, hours, and employment in cities...

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities...

Nearly 100 cities and local governments in the United States passed living wage laws since the mid-1990s. The central goal of living wages is to reduce poverty, yet they may fail to do so because of disemployment effects. We summarize and critique the existing research on the effects of living...

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States, but they have also failed in numerous cities. Some were derailed by state legislative or judicial decisions, and others were voted down or vetoed at the city level. This paper exploits the information provided...

Many features of living wage laws may influence the strength of their effects on the wages and employment of low-skill workers. Echoing past research, we find that business assistance living wage laws generate stronger wage increases and employment reductions than do contractor-only laws....