An economist is trying to move the debate over the minimum wage beyond its usual focus on jobs — and has found higher wages lead to healthier babies.
Robert Kaestner is with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. He's co-author of a paper that looked at babies of mothers with lower education levels. He compared babies born in areas with higher minimum wages to those born elsewhere.
Kaestner says for this group, every dollar-per-hour increase means about a thousand dollars annually.
“We found that this thousand-dollar increase, from about a dollar increase in the minimum wage, was associated with very beneficial effects for the infant health. Nor large, but beneficial."
Kaestnersays for every dollar increase in wages, babies were born 11 grams heavier. That suggests the women had longer, healthier pregnancies.
