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Wed/Thurs, September 21st and 22nd - Mrs. Marlowe's website

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Wed/Thurs, September 21st and 22nd - Mrs. Marlowe's website

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Wed/Thurs, September 21st and 22nd - Mrs. Marlowe's website

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Regarding the debate of whether or not college athletes should be paid, Danny Kanell acknowledges that these players are receiving the opportunity of an education and the experiences that go along with it, which is a privilege in itself.

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Should college players be paid? - ESPN Video

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Regarding the debate of whether or not college athletes should be paid, Danny Kanell acknowledges that these players are receiving the opportunity of an education and the experiences that go along with it, which is a privilege in itself.

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These days, being a teenager isn't easy. Teens' overburdened schedules often include juggling afterschool activities, sports practice, and homework, which combined with working part time for extra spending money or to contribute to household expenses, leaves many teens feeling overworked, stressed, and stretched to the limit.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, close to a quarter of all U.S. high school students participate in the workforce. Legislators are well aware of the hectic pace of adolescence, and most states place limits on the amount of hours teens can work, with 20 hours a week the standard limit. Despite the considerable evidence working over the 20 hour limit leads to slipping grades, increased dropout rates, and other behavioral problems, states like Missouri and Maine have recently introduced legislation that would repeal many child labor protections or increase the amount of hours teens are allowed to work.

Research has consistently shown that working over the standard 20 hour a week limit negatively affects teens in a variety of ways:

Academic & behavioral problems. Researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Virginia, and Temple University issued a recent report finding that working more than 20 hours a week during the school year leads to academic and behavior problems. [Source: Monahan, Lee & Steinberg, Child Development, January/February 2011.]

The more hours a student works, the more likely their grades are to be lower. [Source: Singh, Journal of Educational Research, 91.]

Low grades-even a small difference in sleep matters. Researchers from the College of the Holy Cross, and Brown University Medical School found that students who reported that they were getting C's, D's and F's in school obtained about 25 minutes less sleep and went to bed about 40 minutes later than students who reported they were getting A's and B's. Even a little sleep makes a big difference! [Source: Wolfson & Carskadon, Child Development, 1998.]

Dropping out. A study published in the Sociology of Education demonstrates that working more than 20 hours each week leads to higher dropout rates [Source: D'Amico, Sociology of Education, 57]

Another study in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) reports that students who work between 1 and 15 hours per week are more likely to complete high school; however, students who work more than 15 hours each week are more likely to drop out. [Source: Warren, LePore & Mare, AERJ, 37]

Sports & after school activities. Youth who work long hours may also be unable to take full advantage of valuable extra curricula and community activities that promote learning and school engagement [Source: McNeal 1995; Osgood 1999; Schoenhals et al. Sociology of Education, 83, 1998].

Youth work and college. Research suggests that high school student who don't work at all or work more than 20 hours are less likely to go to college than students who work 1-20 hours. [Source: U.S. Department of Labor. Report on the Youth Labor Force. (2000).]

Lack of sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than one quarter of high school students fall asleep in class now. Four in 10 adolescents go to bed after 11:00 pm on school nights. "Almost all teen-agers, as they reach puberty, become walking zombies because they are getting far too little sleep," observes Cornell University psychologist James Maas, PhD, one of the nation's leading sleep experts.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified adolescents and young adults (ages 12 to 25 years) as a population at high risk for problem sleepiness based on "evidence that the prevalence of problem sleepiness is high and increasing with particularly serious consequences." (NIH, 1997) [source: National Sleep Foundation web site]

One of the major recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation's research report Adolescent Sleep Needs and Patterns: "Child labor laws [are needed] to restrict the number of hours and the time of day that adolescents are permitted to work."

Driving deaths. Sleepiness can contribute to injuries and deaths related to lapses in attention and delayed response times at critical moments, especially while driving. Drowsiness or fatigue has been identified as a principle cause in at least 100,000 police-reported traffic crashes each year, killing more than 1,500 Americans and injuring another 71,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, 1994). Young drivers age 25 or under are involved in more than one-half of fall-asleep crashes. [Source: National Sleep Foundation web site].

According to a report in Forbes, 49% of fatal crashes happen at night, with a fatality rate per mile of travel about three times as high as daytime hours. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fatal crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers occurred four times more at night than during the day (37 percent versus 9 percent). If Maine allows teens to work till 11:00 as proposed legislation would allow, the number of teens killed or injured in drunk-driving accidents will increase.

Workplace injuries. Each year, about 230,000 teens are injured at work. Longer and later hours will increase the likelihood of an injury because of the correlation between fatigue and injuries. [Source: NIOSH]

Workplace violence. According to the 2009 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 521 Americans were murdered in the work place. An estimated 2 million Americans are the victims of workplace violence each year. Teens tend to work in jobs that elevate their risk for workplace violence-service and retail jobs that involve exchanging money and dealing with the public. Working till 11:00 would increase the chances that teens will be working alone or closing up, exposing them to additional risk.

Work help teens gain valuable experience, teaches them much needed skills, and provides necessary spending money-but a few simple rules should be followed. First, teen workers should select a job that is not unusually dangerous (see NCL's "Five Worst Teen Jobs" report for guidance in selecting the proper job). The student workweek should be limited to 20 hours or less and should not go past 10 p.m. on a school night. Students should never work alone or without supervision and should receive job safety training and discuss job safety with their employer and their parents. Safe and healthy youth work experiences don't just happen--teens, parents, and employers must work together to make them happen.

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Working more than 20 hours a week is a bad idea for teens - National Consumers League

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These days, being a teenager isn't easy. Teens' overburdened schedules often include juggling afterschool activities, sports practice, and homework, which combined with working part time for extra spending money or to contribute to household expenses, leaves many teens feeling overworked, stressed, and stretched to the limit.

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History of Minimum Wage
The federal minimum wage, introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was initially set at $0.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. Most states plus DC have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage, though several states do not have minimum wage laws (which means workers in those states default to the federal minimum wage). Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Raising the federal minimum wage would not only allow minimum wage workers to afford basic living expenses, but would also reduce income, gender, and racial inequalities.

The current minimum wage is not high enough to allow people to afford housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, "In 2022, a full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $25.82 on average to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S. This... is $18.57 higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.... A full-time worker needs to earn an hourly wage of $21.25 on average in order to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home in the U.S."

Further, 35% of families with full-time year-round employment do not earn enough to pay for essentials including food and childcare. 59% of Hispanic families, 52% of Black families, 25% of white families, and 23% of Asian families that work full-time year-round cannot cover basic needs. Overall, families would need to earn $11 more an hour to cover basic costs, with Black and Hispanic families needing $12 more an hour.

Approximately 91% of workers who would benefit from a raised minimum wage are over 20 years old, with 68% over the age of 25. Most are the primary wage earners for their families, averaging about 52% of their family's income, and most are women and people of color. The current federal minimum wage prevents these individuals and families from meeting basic needs like shelter and food, as well as creating significant obstacles to healthcare, finances for an emergency, and other expenses such as car upkeep.

Increasing the minimum wage would not only bring relief to workers struggling to make ends meet, it would also raise the incomes of people who make slightly more than minimum wage. The Brookings Institution found that increasing the minimum wage would result in higher wages for the 3.7 million people earning minimum wage and up to 35 million workers who make up to 150% of the federal minimum wage.

The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) found that an increase to just $10.10 an hour would raise wages for 28 million Americans-about nine million of those due to the ripple effect.
Read More

Pro 2

Raising the minimum wage to match inflation and productivity would benefit the economy by increasing consumer activity and spurring job growth while lowering the federal deficit.

As journalist Megan Cerullo summarizes, "The federal minimum wage of $7.25 buys less today than it has at any point over the past 66 years.... The current value of the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since February 1956, when the lowest U.S. wage was 75 cents - the equivalent of $7.19 in June 2022 dollars." Raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation would ensure that low-wage workers could adopt a standard of living commensurate with the current economy.

Further, while the estimates of how much the minimum wage should be increased vary, many economists agree that if the wage had kept pace with rising productivity and incomes, it would be higher than the current $7.25 an hour. [14] [17] [18]

With an economic boom and more securely employed workers, the federal deficit would decrease. According to James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government at the University of Texas in Austin, "[b]ecause payroll- and income-tax revenues would rise [as a result of an increase in the minimum wage], the federal deficit would come down."

Further, raising the minimum wage would help reduce the federal budget deficit "by lowering spending on public assistance programs and increasing tax revenue. Since firms are allowed to pay poverty-level wages to 3.6 million people - 5 percent of the workforce - these workers must rely on Federal income support programs. This means that taxpayers have been subsidizing businesses, whose profits have risen to record levels over the past 30 years," according to Aaron Pacitti, Associate Professor of Economics at Siena College.
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Pro 3

Increasing the minimum wage would have numerous social benefits including reducing poverty and crime, and increasing school attendance and the healthy population.
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Con 1

Raising the minimum wage would increase housing and consumer goods costs for everyone and greatly disadvantage minimum wage workers.

Raising the minimum wage could decrease employee benefits and increase tax payments, further costing the employees. According to James Sherk, MA, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a single mother working full time and earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would be over $260 a month worse off if the minimum wage were raised to $10.10: "While her market income rises by $494, she loses $71 in EITC [earned income tax credit] refunds, pays $37 more in payroll taxes and $45 more in state income taxes. She also loses $88 in food stamp benefits and $528 in child-care subsidies."

Raising the minimum wage also creates more jobs for more skilled workers, disadvantaging teenagers, young adults, and those with less education and experience. If employers have to pay an employee more, they will expect the employee to have a more experienced skill set, essentially removing the job from the tier of jobs available to minimum wage workers.
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Con 2

Raising the minimum wage, instead of allowing the free market to determine an appropriate rate, will decrease employee compensation, while forcing businesses to close, use automation, or outsource jobs.

Increasing the minimum wage increases costs for businesses. If a business cannot or will not support the increased cost, the first method of cost correction is to cut hours or lay off employees. Researchers found that "For every $1 increase in the minimum wage, ...the total number of workers scheduled to work each week increased by 27.7%, while the average number of hours each worker worked per week decreased [sic] by 20.8%. For an average store in California, these changes translated into four extra workers per week and five fewer hours per worker per week - which meant that the total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California store actually fell by 13.6%." The decrease in hours also meant erratic schedules that are difficult for employees to maintain and a decrease in eligibility for benefits such as retirement packages and healthcare.

Businesses that cannot or will not pay a higher minimum wage may also turn to more robots and automated processes to replace service employees. Oxford University researchers explain "robots are already performing many simple service tasks such as vacuuming, mopping, lawn mowing, and gutter cleaning" and that "commercial service robots are now able to perform more complex tasks in food preparation, health care, commercial cleaning, and elderly care."
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Con 3

Raising the federal minimum wage would exacerbate income disparities and the cycle of poverty.

Cost of living varies wildly in the United States. For example, living in New York, California, and Hawaii costs significantly more than living in Mississippi, Kansas, or Montana. If the federal government raises the minimum wage significantly, the wage will be proportionately much higher in lower income states, meaning employers will not be able to afford the costs of paying employees and residents will not be able to afford the cost of living increases necessary to make up the difference. Small rural communities would especially suffer from the disparity.
Read More

Did You Know?

1. America's minimum wage law was signed in 1938. The minimum wage was set at 25 cents, which is equivalent to $5.19 in 2022 dollars.

2. 44% of minimum wage earners are under 25 years old.

3. 30 states and DC have set minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. As of Jan. 12, 2023, the highest is DC, at $16.50 an hour, followed by Washington state at $15.74 an hour.

4. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.

5. The first state minimum wage laws, introduced between 1912 and the early 1930s, only covered women and minors. The first to cover men was introduced in 1937 in Oklahoma.

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Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?

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History of Minimum Wage The federal minimum wage, introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was initially set at $0.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.

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2016 literature review of academic studies and papers that looks at the minimum wage in the United States, its wider effects and policy implications.

In 2016, California became the first state to adopt legislation that will gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. New York City, Seattle, and Washington D.C. also have plans to phase in a $15-per-hour wage floor. Others are raising wages above the federally mandated rate, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. On August 1, 2016, for example, Minnesota's minimum wage rose to $9.50 per hour at the state's largest companies.

The changes come after years of national debate about the need to raise pay so families can earn a living wage. The U.S. federal minimum wage was first established during the Depression, and it has risen from 25 cents to $7.25 per hour since it was first instituted in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Despite the increases, inflation has eroded its value; returning it to the value it held in 1968 would require an increase to nearly $10 per hour. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour, which in adjusted terms would put it back at its early 1980s level. According to administration estimates, this would boost the wages of some 15 million people. Supporters of these efforts note that women in particular are likely to benefit significantly.

But increasing the minimum wage may have impacts beyond adding more money to employees' pockets. A Purdue University study released in July 2015 suggests that paying fast-food restaurant employees $15 an hour could lead to higher prices. Prices at those businesses could increase by an estimated 4.3 percent, according to the report.

Earlier studies have indicated that some businesses will cut jobs to pay employees more. In February 2014, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report, "The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income," that explores two scenarios: Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 or to $9.00. The report concludes that there are distinct trade-offs. Under the $10.10 scenario, there would likely be a reduction of about 500,000 workers across the labor market, as businesses shed jobs, but about 16.5 million low-wage workers would see substantial gains in their earnings in an average week. Under the $9.00 scenario, the labor force would see a reduction of 100,000 jobs, but an estimated 7.6 million low-wage workers would see a boost in their weekly earnings.

Critics assert that the real effects of minimum-wage increases are negative: they hurt businesses, raise prices and ultimately are counterproductive for the working poor, as they can lead to unemployment. For a good sense of the partisan argument - and the statistics and studies that are often cited - see these position pieces from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

At the macro level, a substantial increase in the federal minimum wage is likely to have broad effects, with some studies predicting that it could "ripple" across the economy, boosting the wages of nearly 30 percent of the American workforce.

The best starting point for understanding the debate may be a factual picture of minimum-wage earners, as there are many myths. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) illustrates this as follows:

The BLS further notes that in 2015: "Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 11 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 2 percent of workers age 25 and older."

There is a huge research literature associated with this issue, as detailed below. Among the extended primers worth considering is the 2014 book "What Does the Minimum Wage Do?" by Dale Belman of Michigan State University and Paul Wolfson of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. That work synthesizes some 200 papers. In their conclusion, they write:

Evidence leads us to conclude that moderate increases in the minimum wage are a useful means of raising wages in the lower part of the wage distribution that has little or no effect on employment and hours. This is what one seeks in a policy tool, solid benefits with small costs. That said, current research does not speak to whether the same results would hold for large increases in the minimum wage.

Fundamentals and framings
Beneath the political claims and efforts on both sides is a profound philosophical debate between neoclassical economics - with its emphasis on aggregate growth and what is best for the market as a whole - and progressive economics, beginning with John Maynard Keynes and the New Deal, with an emphasis on shared prosperity and fairness. In the minimum-wage debate, much depends on framing and assumptions, as well as one's interpretation of the larger patterns of increasing wage inequality in the United States. Although there is no doubt that inequality has risen significantly over the past few decades, studies can be found to support positions on both sides of the minimum-wage issue, and questions remain about the precise relationship with inequality dynamics.

Scholarly debates over the minimum wage have taken a distinct shape over the past two decades. In the 1990s, Princeton's Alan Krueger - now Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers - and his colleague David Card produced a seminal paper that has framed much of the subsequent debate. Those scholars examined the results of a New Jersey law raising the minimum wage, comparing the outcomes in the fast food industry to those in the bordering state of Pennsylvania, where wage laws remained the same. Their study called into question textbook assumptions about how labor markets might work. The findings included:

The data indicated "no evidence that the rise in New Jersey's minimum wage reduced employment at fast-food restaurants in the state."

Further, "prices of fast-food meals increased in New Jersey relative to Pennsylvania, suggesting that much of the burden of the minimum-wage rise was passed on to consumers."

That paper's implication was that the neoclassical models, which suggested the opposite would happen, didn't comport with reality - data triumphed over theory. For the next decade, the economics profession saw an extended debate about whether that paper's fundamental insights were right and could be extended to support policy. Krueger and Card had to defend their findings in a follow-up to the original paper. In 2000, dozens of pages of an issue of the American Economic Review were dedicated to this fight, as Timothy Taylor notes at his "Conversable Economist" blog.
Subsequent studies
Some subsequent studies have generally supported aspects of Krueger/Card. A 2004 study of available literature, "The Effect of Minimum Wage on Prices," analyzed a wide variety of research on the impact of changes in the minimum wage. The paper, from the University of Leicester, found that firms tend to respond to minimum wage increases not by reducing production or employment, but by raising prices. Overall, price increases are modest: For example, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would increase food prices by no more than 4 percent and overall prices by no more than 0.4 percent, significantly less than the minimum-wage increase.

In a 2010 study published in Review of Economics and Statistics, scholars Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich also looked at low-wage sectors in states that raised the minimum wage and compared them with those in bordering areas where there were no mandated wage changes. They found "strong earnings effects and no employment effects of minimum-wage increases."

A 2012 paper published in the Journal of Public Economics, "Optimal Minimum Wage Policy in Competitive Labor Markets," furnishes a theoretical model that lends some support to the empirical insights of Krueger/Card. The paper, from David Lee at Princeton and Emmanuel Saez at UC-Berkeley, concludes: "The minimum wage is a useful tool if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers, and this remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes/transfers." However, under certain labor market conditions, it may be better for the government to subsidize low-wage workers and keep the minimum wage relatively low.
Diverse outcomes
The research generally supports the idea that raising the minimum wage would have varying effects across U.S. regions and industries, even if on the whole it doesn't produce massive negative effects.

A 2013 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater?" casts doubt on some of the existing research methods and data modeling that economists have used. The paper's authors, which include longtime subject experts David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board, find that the overall evidence "still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others, and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage." These scholars have written previously that, in the short run, minimum wage increases both help some families get out of poverty and make it more likely that previously non-poor families may fall into poverty.

At the ground level, this all suggests that a small firm in a low-wage region might, for example, respond to an increase in the minimum wage by having the owner pick up more hours herself and cut back on an employee's overtime hours. A large firm might likewise try to squeeze more work out of its salaried managers and hire more part-time workers, to avoid benefits obligations. At the same time, because work has a social dimension - and is not purely an economic endeavor - many employees might keep their jobs at the higher mandated wages because of employer loyalty or trust, or the simple desire to avoid the complications of restructuring business operations to account for fewer workers. The lesson here is to distrust sweeping generalizations about what might result from a minimum-wage increase within the national labor market as a whole.
Related subsidies
It's worth keeping in mind that low wages impact more than just workers. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is, in effect, a wage subsidy, and consequently paid for by taxpayers, not private firms. A 2013 study from U.C. Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-wage Jobs in the Fast-Food Industry," found that workers at McDonalds and other major restaurant chains use federal and state programs at far higher rates than other workers - costs that are again picked up by society. A raise in the minimum wage might, in theory, shift some of the burden back to private companies, something that some labor economists see as being only fair.

A 2004 briefing paper from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center, "Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs," analyzes this issue through a study of the nation's largest retail employer. As Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein has suggested, however, the overall cost-benefit analysis for such retailers must account for more than just wages.
Helpful resources
MIT's Living Wage Calculator explains the amount an individual must earn to support oneself and a family across all American states and counties, along with data on expenses, typical annual salaries and local minimum wages. In Manhattan, for example, the living wage for an adult with one child is over $28.24 per hour; it is over $14.52 for a single adult. The local minimum wage is currently $8.75. In Grand Island, Nebraska, the living wage for a single adult is $9.36; with one child $20.81; the minimum wage is $8.

The following papers provide further insights into the effects of minimum-wage laws and focus on some under-appreciated dynamics:
_______ "The Minimum Wage and the Labor Market"
Rocheteau, Guillaume; Tasci, Murat. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, May 2007.

Excerpt: "New models of employment show that there are some cases in which a minimum wage can have positive effects on employment and social welfare. The effects depend ultimately on the prevailing market wage and the frictions in the market. Evidence to date does not support the view that raising the minimum wage will lead to positive employment effects."

"The Unexpected Long-Run Impact of the Minimum Wage: An Educational Cascade"
Sutch, Richard. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010.

Abstract: "Neglected, but significant, the long-run consequence of the minimum wage - which was made national policy in the United States in 1938 - is its stimulation of capital deepening. This took two forms. First, the engineered shortage of low-skill, low-paying jobs induced teenagers to invest in additional human capital - primarily by extending their schooling - in an attempt to raise their productivity to the level required to gain employment. Second, employers faced with an inability to legally hire low-wage workers, rearranged their production processes to substitute capital for low-skill labor and to innovate new technologies. This paper explores the impact of the minimum wage on enrollments between 1950 and 2003. I describe an upward ratcheting mechanism which triggers an "educational cascade." My estimate is that the average number of years of high school enrollment would have risen to only 3.5 years, rather than 3.7 years, for men born in 1951. Thereafter, enrollment rates would have trended down to about 3.2 years for the cohort born in 1986, rather than slowly rising to around 3.9 years. The cumulative effect of the minimum wage increases beginning in 1950 was to add 0.7 years to the average high school experience of men born in 1986."
"Estimating Potential Reductions in Premature Mortality in New York City From Raising the Minimum Wage to $15"
Tsao, Tsu-Yu; et al. American Journal of Public Health, June 2016. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303188.

Results: "A $15 minimum wage could have averted 2,800 to 5,500 premature deaths between 2008 and 2012 in New York City, representing 4 percent to 8 percent of total premature deaths in that period. Most of these avertable deaths would be realized in lower-income communities, in which residents are predominantly people of color."

"The Impact of Minimum Wage Rates on Body Weight in the United States"
Meltzer, David O.; Chen, Zhuo. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009.

Abstract: "Growing consumption of increasingly less expensive food, and especially "fast food", has been cited as a potential cause of increasing rate of obesity in the United States over the past several decades. Because the real minimum wage in the United States has declined by as much as half over 1968-2007 and because minimum wage labor is a major contributor to the cost of food away from home we hypothesized that changes in the minimum wage would be associated with changes in bodyweight over this period. To examine this, we use data from 1984-2006 to test whether variation in the real minimum wage was associated with changes in body mass index (BMI). We also examine whether this association varied by gender, education and income, and used quantile regression to test whether the association varied over the BMI distribution. We also estimate the fraction of the increase in BMI since 1970 attributable to minimum wage declines. We find that a $1 decrease in the real minimum wage was associated with a 0.06 increase in BMI. This relationship was significant across gender and income groups and largest among the highest percentiles of the BMI distribution. Real minimum wage decreases can explain 10 percent of the change in BMI since 1970. We conclude that the declining real minimum wage rates has contributed to the increasing rate of overweight and obesity in the United States. Studies to clarify the mechanism by which minimum wages may affect obesity might help determine appropriate policy responses."
______ Special thanks to economist Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, for his insights for this article.

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Minimum wage: Updated research roundup on the effects of increasing pay

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2016 literature review of academic studies and papers that looks at the minimum wage in the United States, its wider effects and policy implications. In 2016, California became the first state to adopt legislation that will gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. New York City, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

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Better life for children of undocumented immigrants

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Better life for children of undocumented immigrants

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Cristian's topic

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Wildin Acosta will walk across the graduation stage in June-but he almost didn't make it. Read about his incredible journey and the team of student journalists and teachers who helped make it happen.

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Azariah's topic

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As someone who students and their families look to for guidance and advice-even for issues outside of the classroom-you may at some point be asked your thoughts on high school students holding part-time jobs. If you could use a refresher on the benefits and risks of students working while in high school, this article is for you.

First of all, there are obviously a number of reasons why high school students choose to get jobs-to help support their families, to save for college, or to just earn some extra money. Nearly 1 in 4 high school students worked in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Here are some things you need to know about high school students and part-time jobs.

High school students benefit from part-time employment, but they need time management skills

Learning to budget time and to use it well is a skill that many students don't learn until they're in college or in their actual careers. Yet knowing how to handle numerous responsibilities helps students prepare for the academic vigor of college.

Going from school to extracurricular activities and then to a job means having to do homework late at night, or, in some cases, working ahead during the weekends to ensure everything is complete for the coming week. It's possible for students to overcommit themselves out of a desire to make more money or because they are not yet adept at time management.

While the line between how much work is too much may seem nebulous, experts have found that students who work more than 15 to 20 hours a week see a decrease in academic performance. Teens shouldn't exceed the recommended number of hours at their jobs, nor should they spend sleeping or studying time at work.

If you're advising students or their families on this issue, be sure to mention these points and that time management has to be a factor in their schedule-because the last thing you'd want is for their performance to drop in class.

Federal rules for working teenagers

Here are just a few facts that may good for you to know if the conversations come up: The Department of Labor sets rules for working teenagers in the Fair Labor Standards Act . The minimum age for non-agricultural work is 14.

Working hours for 14- and 15-year-olds are limited to:

Non-school hours

3 hours in a school day

18 hours in a school week

8 hours on a non-school day

40 hours on a non-school week

Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (except from June 1 through Labor Day, when hours are extended to 9 p.m.)

Students who are 16 and 17 can work unlimited hours, but only in jobs declared non-hazardous by the Secretary of Labor . Once they turn 18, students can work unlimited hours and are not barred from hazardous jobs.

Because teens over 16 can work unlimited hours, they have the most responsibility for balancing school and work. Parents of students ages 16 to 18 should make sure their jobs don't expect them to work late hours and should carefully monitor work schedules. If students appear to be spending too much time at work, parents should help them refocus on their studies.

Learning in the field: How students can develop skills related to their interests

In addition to teaching students real-world skills such as working with the public and as part of a staff, jobs give them exposure to fields they may hope to enter as adults. A job answering phones, running errands, or performing administrative tasks enables students to understand how fields they're interested in work day to day and what those careers demand in terms of education, skill, and time commitment.

Furthermore, taking a job in their field of interest allows a student to show enthusiasm and aptitude for that field of study, which makes their application more desirable to college acceptance committees. Is your student interested in teaching? They could work for an after-school program or as a camp counselor. What about accounting? A job in an accounting office helping with administrative work could give them a glimpse into what their future may hold.

Students should also think outside the box when looking for jobs to help develop skills related to their fields of interest. For example, a student interested in medicine might want to become a licensed lifeguard, which would enable him or her to learn lifesaving skills such as CPR. Working in the field, in some capacity, helps students build job-related skills and further ensures that their interest in the field is warranted.

Teachers and parents can create a framework for successful high school employment

While working during the high school years can help teach students responsibility and other important skills, parents and teachers need to help set students up for success. Ideas include:

Develop or take advantage of existing relationships with local service providers, stores, and other businesses that employ teenagers to ensure productive (and legal) working environments

Help students set up weekly schedules that allot time needed for homework and studying

Teach students how to keep a calendar or daily planner, either digitally or on paper, to avoid overcommitment and scheduling conflicts

As long as the job is safe, legal, and leaves ample time for academics, working during high school can benefit students, parents, and the surrounding community. Students learn skills and responsibility by working, remove some financial burden from their parents by earning their own money. and serve the people of their communities. And as their teacher, you may very well see their new skills and desire to work harder right in your class.
Caitrin Blake has a BA in English and Sociology from the University of Vermont and a master's degree in English literature from the University of Colorado Denver. She teaches composition at Arapahoe Community College.
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