The Minimum Wage and Infant Mortality

Interest in the non-economic impact of minimum wage laws have led to a growing literature examining how population health measures respond to state minimum wage increases in the US. These studies rely on the canonical two-way fixed effect estimator, which is an unreliable method to infer causal effects with spatially heterogeneous populations. In this paper, I study the impact of minimum wage differences across states and within-state ordinances on infant mortality rates. I isolate the causal effect of the minimum wage by employing a spatial regression discontinuity design using neighboring counties in different states that are contiguous to a common state border as local treatment and control populations. I find that a 10 percent increase in local cost-of-living adjusted minimum wage reduces infant mortality rates by 3.2 percent among lower-educated mothers — a group more likely affected by minimum wage changes. I find that reductions in infant mortality is concentrated in the post-neonatal period. I also demonstrate that the traditional empirical approach employed in this literature will produce lower estimates of the health impact of the minimum wage. My findings provide robust evidence that minimum wage increases are causally linked with improved infant health