UW News today featured two new studies today about Seattle’s minimum wage.
The first study is from Evans School co-authors Heather Hill and Scott Allard (“Responding to an Increased Minimum Wage: A Mixed Methods Study of Child Care Businesses during the Implementation of Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance”), which was published in the December issue of Social Work and Society International Online Journal, “found that more than half of Seattle child care businesses were affected by increased labor costs as the policy increased to $13 per hour, and that the majority will be impacted as the policy increases to $15 per hour between 2019 and 2021.”
The second study featured today, from Evans School co-author Mark Long (“The Impact of a City-Level Minimum Wage Policy on Supermarket Food Prices by Food Quality Metrics: A Two-Year Follow Up Study”), was published last month in the online International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, overall found no significant evidence of price increases on local area supermarket food prices associated with the minimum wage ordinance.
Congrats to Professors Hill, Allard, and Long for these important bodies of research.