Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Economics, BA, BS
School
CAS
Department
Economics Department
Faculty Advisor
Johnathan Haughton
Abstract
This paper collected and collated data from multiple governmental sources as well as other research studies and written sources to examine whether raising the minimum wage from 7.25$ to 15$ would affect the economy and if it does—how drastically. Data collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, A Guide to Cost Benefit Analysis by Edward Gramlich, etc. This data was then collated into an easily comparable and viewable form. Then it was put into Stata and run through various regressions to determine the impact of the minimum wage on the factors of unemployment and income per capita. I predicted that the impact on unemployment and income per capita by raising the federal minimum wage would be large. My regressions proved that the minimum wage does affect unemployment, unemployment does not drive the minimum wage however, and that the income per capita of a state is significantly affected by an increase in the minimum wage. This proves my hypothesis partially true, but more data retrieval and analysis need to be done in order to provide more definitive answers.
Creative Commons License
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Recommended Citation
Dunn, Harrison Wyatt, "How Does a Higher Minimum Wage Affect the Economy?" (2020). Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects. 11.
https://dc.suffolk.edu/undergrad/11