Injuries/Violence
Impact of state minimum hourly wage increases on homicide mortality rates in the United States from 2010 to 2020 Kate Vinita Fitch* Kate Vinita Fitch N. Jeanie Santaularia Maryam Tanveer Naoko Fulcher Shabbar I. Ranapurwala
Background: Homicide death is a top cause of premature mortality in the United States and one with extreme race and class inequities. While community-based violence intervention programs can be effective to reduce homicide, it is necessary to address the upstream structural factors that contribute to homicide death including racism, poverty, and class inequality. We evaluated the effectiveness of one upstream approach – increasing state minimum hourly wage – on homicide mortality rates using a decade of data from all 50 US states.
Methods: Using death records from the National Vital Statistics System, we calculated state monthly homicide mortality rates from 2010 to 2020. With controlled interrupted time series and synthetic control interrupted time series analyses using autoregressive integrated moving average models, we compared monthly homicide mortality rates for states implementing a state minimum wage increase.
Results: Implementation of state minimum wage increase of at least $1 above federal minimum was associated with an immediate relative reduction in homicide mortality rates of -0.25 (-0.76, 0.27) deaths per 100,000 PY compared to states never above federal minimum wage and an immediate relative increase of 0.50 (-0.23, 1.23) deaths per 100,000 PY compared to states always above federal minimum wage. Intervention states experienced sustained annual declines of -0.09 (-0.30, 0.12) deaths per 100,000 PY compared to states never above federal minimum and -0.18 (-0.41, 0.05) deaths per 100,000 PY compared to states always above federal minimum over the four years post-intervention. Results using preliminary synthetic controls were similar. Further analyses investigating racialized inequities are forthcoming.
Conclusions: This study suggests that increasing minimum wage is an effective intervention in reducing homicide mortality rates on a state level.
