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This article examines city-level trends in wages, poverty, and unemployment following the passage of municipal living wage ordinances. Drawing on 15 years of longitudinal data from 1995 to 2009, I first present an analysis of cities before and after the passage of living wage laws and then compare living wage cities to a matched sample of control cities that have not adopted living wage legislation. I find that the adoption of living wage ordinances is not associated with significant changes in wages, poverty, and unemployment at the city level. This can likely be traced to the relatively small proportion of urban workers covered by most existing living wage laws.
Benjamin Sosnaud (Tue,) studied this question.