1 Introduction

The role of policy analysis is to connect research with policy. Because of heavy time constrains, policy analyses are typically ambiguous regarding the details of how the analysis was carried out. This creates three problems: (i) its hard to understand the connection between research and policy, (ii) allows policy makers to cherry pick policy reports, and (iii) hinders systematic improvement and/or automation of parts of the analysis. In this document we demonstrate the use of a reproducible workflow to reduce the ambiguity in policy analysis.

Here we attempt to contribute to the policy discussion of the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a contentious policy issue in the US. Increasing it has positive and negative effects that different policymakers value differently. We aim to add clarity on what those effects are, how much do we know about them, and how those effects vary when elements of the analysis change. We select the most up-to-date, non-partisan, policy analysis of the effects of raising the minimum wage, and build an open-source reproducible analysis on top of it.

In 2014 the Congressional Budget Office published the report titled “The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income”. The report receive wide attention from key stakeholders and has been used extensible as an input in the debate around the minimum wage. To this date we consider the CBO report to be the best non-partisan estimation of the effects of raising the minimum wage at the federal level. Although there was disagreement among experts around some technical issues, this disagreement has been mainly circumscribed around one of the many inputs used in the analysis, and we can fit the opposing positions in to our framework.

Our purposes are twofold: First, promote the technical discussion around a recurrent policy issue (minimum wage) by making explicit and visible all the components and key assumptions of its most up-to-date official policy analysis. Second, demonstrate how new scientific practices of transparency and reproducibility (T & R) can be applied to policy analysis. We encourage the reader to collaborate in this document and help develop an ever-improving version of the important policy estimates[^3] (re)produced here.

To achieve our goal we reviewed the CBO report and extract the key components of its analysis. We adapt new guidelines propose by the scientific community (TOP) into policy analysis. In it, the analysis achieves the highest standards of transparency and reproducibility (T & R) when the data, methods and workflow are completely reproducible and every part of the analysis and its assumptions, are easily readable. We also benefit from hindsight and structure this document around the costs and benefits mainly discussed in the policy debate.

CBO’s report, in its original form already represents a significant improvement in T & R relative to the standard practices of policy analyses. The report contains most of the components required for a full reproduction. We add the missing components, make explicit assumptions when needed, complement the narrative explanations with some mathematical formulae, visualizations, and the analytical code use behind all the replication.

Important Note:

Although our aim is to translate practices of T & R from Science to Policy Analysis, we need to highlight an important difference regarding reproducibility between the two of them. A scientific report takes the form of a peer review publication that represent several months or years of research, followed up by a review process that can be as lengthy as the research itself. For this reason, when a scientific publication is subject to replication is expected to succeed. Policy analysis is usually performed under tight deadlines, and is not unusual to rely on arbitrary assumptions and/or irreproducible calculations. For this reasons we do not attempt to replicate the CBO report as a way of testing the veracity of the analysis. We use reproducibility, paired with full transparency, to generate a living document that represents the best policy analysis up to date. Our expectations are that this living document will be serve as a building block to discuss and incorporate incremental improvements to the policy analysis used to inform the debate around the minimum wage.

The CBO report describes three policy estimates: the effects of raising the minimum wage on income of families with members that receive a raise, the effects on income of families with members that loose their jobs, and the distributions of losses in the economy used to pay for the raise in the minimum wage. All the policy estimates to replicate are presented in the following tables.

Note on the code languages (R and Stata): The analysis can be replicated using either language, but only R provides the one-click workflow. For Stata the reader has to copy and paste the scripts sequentially or excecute this do file.

Policy estimates in CBO report: Overall effects
Effects/Policy Estimates
wage gains (billions of $) 31
wage losses (bns of $) ~5
Balance losses (bns of $) ~24
Net effect (bns of $) 2
# of Wage gainers (millions) 16.5
#of Wage losers (millions) 0.5
Policy estimates in CBO report: Distributional effects across poverty lines (PL)
<1PL [1PL, 3PL) [3PL, 6PL) >6PL
Balance losses (bns of $) ~0.3 ~3.4 ~3.4 ~17
Net effect (bns of $) 5 12 2 -17

In this companion we attempt to reproduce all the policy estimates of table 1 and 2, and walk the reader through all the details behind it. At a high level, two key components need to be computed: employment effects and distributional effects.

2 Employment effects

At a general level the effects on employment (\(\widehat{\Delta E}\)) will be calculated using a more detailed version of the following equation:

\[ \begin{equation} \widehat{\Delta E} = N \times \eta \times \% \Delta w + \text{Other factors} \label{eq:1} \tag{1} \end{equation} \]

Where \(N\) represents the relevant population, \(\eta\) the elasticity of labor demand, \(\Delta w\) the relevant percentual variation in wages, and the Other factors will encapsulate effects on employment through an increase in the aggregate demand.

We first describe some general methodological considerations and then describe how to compute each component from equation \(\eqref{eq:1}\).

2.1 Data, wages, and forecast

We describe the data used, the chosen wage variable, and the procedure used to forecast the wage and population distribution of 2016 using data from 2013.

2.1.1 Data

The Current Population Survey (CPS) was used to compute the effects on employment. From the analysis described in the section on distributional effects of the original report, we can deduce that the data corresponds to the Outgoing Rotation Group (ORG). CPS is a monthly cross sectional survey. The same individual is interviewed eight times over a period of 12 months. The interviews take place in the first and last 4 months of that period. By the 4th and 12th interview, individuals are asked detailed information on earnings. The CPS ORG file contains the information on this interviews for a given year. We analyze the data for 2013.

Currently three versions of these data sets can be found online: CPS raw files, ORG NBER and ORG CEPR. The analysis will be performed using the CPER ORG data base.

The weights used in our analysis will be orgwgt/12

2.1.1.1 Code to load the data

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2.1.2 Wage variable

We assume no further adjustments like imputation for top coding, trimming, excluding overtime/commissions, or imputation of usual hours for ‘’hours vary’’ respondents. The CEPR ORG data includes several wage variables (described here). The wage variable that best matches the description above is wage3. This variable measures earnings for hourly workers (excluding overtime, tips, commissions and bonuses -otc-) and non hourly workers (including otc). According to CEPR “…attempts to match the NBER’s recommendation for the most consistent hourly wage series from 1979 to the present”

2.1.3 Note on CBO’s Wage Adjustment

In the original report from CBO, an adjustment was made to the wage of all the workers that did not report an hourly wage (wage3 is estimated as usual salary per self-reported pay-period over usual hours per pay-period). The goal was to reduce the measurement error in those wages, following the methodology proposed in this paper and compute the adjusted wage as a weighted average of the original wage and the average wage of workers with similar characteristics.

\[ \begin{equation} w_{ig} = \alpha w^{raw}_{ig} - (1 - \alpha) \overline{w^{raw}_{g}} \\ \text{with: } \quad \overline{w^{raw}_{g}} = \frac{\sum_{g} w^{raw}_{ig} }{N_{g}} \label{eq:2} \tag{2} \end{equation} \]

To implement such adjustments into this dynamic document, we requiere information from CBO on: \(\alpha\) and \(G\) in \(\eqref{eq:2}\).

2.1.4 Wage forecast

To simulate the policy effects we need the distribution of wages and employment under the status quo. From the perspective of 2013, this implies forecasting to 2016 data on employment and wages available in 2013.

We forecast the wage distribution, from 2013 to 2016 in the following way:

2.1.4.1 Growth adjustments

We assume that the growth forecasts were taken from the 10-Year Economic Projections from CBO (this website). Annualized growth rates for the number of workers \(g_{workers}\), and nominal wage per \(g_{wages}\) worker where computed as follows:

\[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{ g_{workers} } &= \left[ \frac{\widehat{ N_{workers}^{2016} } }{N_{workers}^{2013}} \right]^{1/3}- 1 \\ \widehat{ g_{wages} } &= \left[ \frac{\widehat{ Wages^{2016} } / \widehat{ N_{workers}^{2016} } }{Wages^{2013} / N_{workers}^{2013}} \right]^{1/3} - 1 \end{aligned} \]

The original report assumes higher wage growth for high wages than low wages. To create different rates of growth in wage, we compute different wage growth rates for each decile of wage. The increments across deciles were constant and the set to match a final lowest decile with a yearly growth rate of 2.9%.

The adjustment over number of workers was made through the weight variable final_weights (multiplying it by the growth rate) whereas the wage3 variable was multiplied by the forecast growth rate of per worker wages.

2.1.4.1.1 Code to get economic growth forecasts
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2.1.4.2 ACA adjustments

In forecasting the wages, the CBO report describes that some wages will be reduced in response to the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act. Given that no details of the adjustments are described in the report, we do not incorporate them in this dynamic document.

2.1.4.3 State level minimum wage adjustments

CBO had to predict the future changes in the state level minimum wages. We use the actual values implemented by each state. The data comes from the Department of Labor (here).

Whenever the predicted wages were below the 2016 federal minimum wage they were replace by it.

Important assumption: when imputing state level min wages, we assume that no effects on employment where incorporated.

2.1.4.3.1 Code to get minimum wage values by state
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2.1.4.4 Code to forecast wages and workers

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2.2 Get the \(N\)

2.2.1 Identify the relevant universe

According to the CPS data, the population of working age in 2013 was 245.7 million*. Of those, 143.9 million were working, 11.5, were unemployed and 90.3 were not in the labor force (NILF).

Among those employed, 129.2 million workers receive a salary (not self employed or self incorporated). A small number of salary workers (0.2 million) did not reported any wages and were excluded from the sample. Of the employed salary workers 53.2 million did not report an hourly wage and it was computed from their reported pay-period divided by the reported hours in such pay-period. However, 3 million workers from this group reported having varying hours. Their wages were not calculated and were also excluded from the sample. As a result the final number of workers where a rise in the minimum wage can have a direct effect is 126 million (= 129.2 - 0.2 - 3), this is our universe of interest. Figure 1 presents visual representation of all these populations.

We know compute some descriptive statistics of the labor force in 2013 and the distribution of wages of the universe of interest both in 2013 and the predicted values for 2016.

Define variable that tags population of interest

2.2.1.1 Statistics and code behind figure 1

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For the universe of interest (employed, salaried, with hourly wages or non varying hours N = 126 millions), we describe the distribution of hourly wages in 2013 and the forecast values for 2016. Figure 2.

2.2.1.2 Statistics and code behind figure 2

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Table 1 below presents more detail statistics for the wage distributions for 2013 and for the forecast wages of 2016.

Comparison of 2013 and 2016 under the status quo
2013 2016: status quo
Salary workers 125,992,501 131,946,284
Median wage 16.25 18.44
< 7.5 0.04 0.01
< 9 0.13 0.08
< 10.10 0.23 0.16
< 13 0.36 0.3
< 15 0.43 0.38

Among the population of interest, the employment effects of the minimum wage will be computed separatedley for adults (\(age\geq 20\)) and teenagers (\(16 \leq age < 20\)). For this purpose we present the wage distribution for both groups. Figure 3.

2.2.1.3 Statistics and code behind figure 3

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2.2.2 Identify relevant population

Given our universe, the next step is to identify the population that would be actually affected if a raise in the minimum wage takes place. The two relevant populations to define now are the number of low wage workers (\(\widehat{ N_{lowwage} }\)) and the number of workers that would earn less than the new minimum wage (\(\widehat{ N_{w\leq MW^{1}} }\)). CBO defines a low wage as one below $11.5 dollars per hour in 2016, and the proposed value used for the minimum wage is $10.10 dollars per hour. From now on we separate each of these groups among adults and teenagers following CBO’s convention.

Three adjustments are applied to the population of workers with wages below the new minimum wage:
1 - Workers whose earnings are mainly from tips are tagged and a different minimum wage is apply to them ($2.13).
2 - A fraction \(\alpha_{ 1 }\) of \(\widehat{ N_{ w\leq MW^{1} } }\) is deleted to account for non compliers.
3 - A fraction \(\alpha_{ 2 }\) of \(\widehat{ N_{ w\leq MW^{1} } }\) is deleted to account for workers not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

After this three adjustments, performed over the relevant population forecast for the year 2016, we obtain the final population.

2.2.2.1 Tipped workers

Additional information needed from CBO: which occupations they used to identify tipped workers and clarify the conceptual need to adjust for this population (as the lower min wage only applies if they make more than 7.50 an hour).

Apply different minimum wage to workers who receive more than $30 in tips. This was applied to 11 occupations (such as waiter, bartender, and hairdresser ~10% if low wage workers)

Given that we do not know which 11 categories the report makes reference to, and which variable that defines the categories, we will use the variable peernuot to identify tipped workers. This variable overestimates the number of tipped workers (13% as opposed to the 10% mentioned in the report) because it also contains the workers paid overtime or commissions.

Tipped workers with wages below 7.25 are 1% of the total tipped workers. Non-tipped workers with wages below 7.25 are 1.6% of the total.

2.2.2.2 Non compliance

We estimate the proportion of low wage workers (wage less then 11.50) that earn less than the their state’s minimum wage in 2013 as a proxy for non compliers under the new minimum wage in 2016. The original report mentions that it comes up to 12% of the low wage population.

Following the original report (footnote 25) we will consider salary workers as non compliers only if their wage is lower than the minimum wage, by less than 25 cents for non-tipped workers or 13 cents for tipped workers.

2.2.2.2.1 Code to compute percentage of non compliers
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2.2.2.3 Not covered that might benefit

Additional information needed from CBO: how they identified non-FLSA eligibility.

  • Include not covered by FLSA but expected to be affected: employees of small firms, occupations generally exempt from FLSA, and teenagers in first 90 days of employment.

The estimated percentage of non-compliance is 10.6% of the target population in 2013 (N = 131,946,284).

2.2.3 Summary

Define \(\hat{g(2016|2013)}\) as the growth factor for the population from the year 2013 to 2016 (\(\hat{g(2016|2013)} = (1 + \hat{g})^3\), where \(\hat{g}\) is the annual growth rate of the population). Then:
\[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{ N^{teen}_{final} } &= \hat{N^{teen}_{\hat{w} \leq MW^{1} } } (2016|2013) \times (1 - \hat{ \alpha^{teen}_{1} } - \hat{ \alpha^{teen}_{2} })\\ &= \hat{ g(2016|2013) } \times \hat{ N^{teen}_{employed} } (2013) \times P(\hat{w} \leq MW^{1}|teen) \times (1 - \hat{ \alpha^{teen}_{1} } - \hat{ \alpha^{teen}_{2} }) \end{aligned} \]

Analogously for the adult population:

\[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{ N^{adult}_{final} } &= \hat{ g(2016|2013) } \times \hat{ N^{adult}_{employed} } (2013) \times P(\hat{w} \leq MW^{1}|adult) \times (1 - \hat{ \alpha^{adult}_{1} } - \hat{ \alpha^{adult}_{2} }) \end{aligned} \]

The table below presents the estimate from 2013 for all each component.

R
Characteristics of target population
Adult Teen Total
Salary workers (\(\hat{ N_{employed} }\)) (millions) 121.69 4.30 125.99
Low wage workers (\(w \leq 11.5 p/h\)) (millions) 26.85 3.73 30.58
% Salary below new MW (\(P(\hat{w} \leq MW^{1})\)) 14.41 74.31 16.46
% of non compliers (\(\alpha_{1}\)) 10.31 12.75 10.57
\(\hat{ g(2016|2013) }\) 1.05 1.05 1.05
\(\widehat{ N_{final} }\) (millions) 16.47 2.92 19.42

2.3 Get the \(\eta \times \Delta w\)

In order to get the elasticity of labor demand that best fits the context analysed here, two steps were required: (i) identify from the literature the best estimate available; (ii) extrapolate that estimate to fit the specific context of this policy analysis.

2.3.1 Getting the best estimates from the literature

It is unclear the precise mechanism used by CBO to choose the estimates for the labor demand elasticity.

We take their estimate as given: -0.1 for the teenager population, with a “likely range” a range from 0 to -0.2 (“likely range” is used throughout the report to estimate the expert judgment that the elasticity will be in that range 2/3 of the time)1. The reasons provided in the report for choosing this figure can be summarize by the following three points:
- More weight was given to studies that exploit across state variation (as opposed to over time country level variation).
- The final estimate takes in to account publication bias towards highly negative estimates.
- The magnitude of the increase (%39) and the fact that would be indexed to inflation going forward, makes it an unusually large increase in the minimum wage.
With this elements we can write the chosen elasticity from the literature (\(\eta_{lit}\)) as the product of the original assessment of the literature (\(\eta_{lit}^{0}\)), a reduction factor for publication bias (\(F_{pub.bias}<1\)) and a amplification factor for a larger variation in minimum wage (\(F_{large.variation}>1\)):

\[ \begin{aligned} \eta^{teen}_{lit} &= \eta_{lit}^{0} \times F_{pub.bias} \times F_{large.variation} = -0.1 \end{aligned} \]

Additionally, CBO provides two additional caveats that could be added to the analysis:
- Ripple effects on employment were assume to be null as the result of two opposing effects: (i) “ripple-wages” would increase unemployment but (ii) substitution of marginally more productive workers for layed off workers below the new minimum wage would decrease unemployment. CBO assumes these effects roughly cancel each other.
- CBO acknowledges that effects could be larger (in abs value) during recessions but does not predict a recession for 2016. No estimation is provided of how much larger those effects would be in case of a recession.

2.3.2 Extrapolating research estimate to current context

Three adjustments are proposed: (i) extrapolate elasticity estimates for teenager to adults; (ii) re-scale elasticity to population affected by the new minimum wage; (iii) adjust elasticities to reflect average wage variation from and increase in the minimum wage.

2.3.2.1 Extrapolate from teenagers to adult population

Most of the estimates from the literate are for teenage population. CBO proposes to extrapolate this estimates to the adult population in the following fashion: \[ \begin{aligned} \eta^{adults}_{lit} = \eta^{teens}_{lit} \times F_{extrapolation} \end{aligned} \]

Where a value \(F_{extrapolation} = 1/3\) is chosen to reflect that the demand for adult labor is suspected to be more inelastic than the demand for teen labor.

2.3.2.2 Re-escale elasticities to the population affected by the minimum wage

The literature reports the estimated effect for a given population \(\eta_{lit}\). This estimate can be seen as the weighted average between the demand elasticities for the directly affected population (\(\eta_{w\leq MW}\)), with wages below the new minimum, and the non affected (\(\eta_{w > MW}\)) populations, with wages above the new minimum:

\[ \begin{aligned} \eta^{g}_{lit} =& p^{g}_{w\leq MW} \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} + (1 - p^{g}_{w\leq MW})\eta^{g}_{w > MW} \hspace{4em} g = \{teens, \, adults \} \end{aligned} \]

The underlying assumption is that \(\eta_{w > MW} = 0\). With this the first proposed adjustment becomes:

\[ \begin{aligned} \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} =& \frac{\eta^{g}_{lit}}{p^{g}_{w\leq MW}} \hspace{4em} g = \{teens, \, adults \} \end{aligned} \]

The fraction of the population with a forecast income below the new minimum wage (\(p^{g}_{w\leq MW}\)) is 74.3% for teenagers and 14.4% for adults.

2.3.2.3 Adjust elasticities to average wage variation

Given that the percentual variation from the old wage to the new minimum wage varies for different levels of wages, total effect should be computed as \(\sum_{b} \% \Delta w_{b} \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} \times N_{b}\) for \(b = 1 \dots B\) wage brackets.

The report approximates this calculation by computing the employment effect for average wage variation across the total population, in age group \(g\), affected by the minimum wage: \(\overline{\%\Delta w^{g}} \times \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} \times \widehat{ N^{final}_{g} }\).

Finally CBO argues that as the variation changes the elasticity should be re-scaled to reflect such variation. With the elasticity resulting in:

\[ \begin{aligned} \widetilde{ \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} } &= \frac{\eta^{g}_{lit}}{p^{g}_{w\leq MW}} \times \frac{\%\Delta MW}{\overline{\%\Delta w^{g}}} = \eta^{g}_{lit} \times F^{g}_{adjs} \hspace{4em} g = \{teens, \, adults \} \end{aligned} \]

Looking at historical trends in the CPS, CBO estimates that \(F^{g}_{adjs}\) is 4.5 for both populations2. In the following table we summarize all the elements required to compute \(\widetilde{ \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} }\)

2.4 Other factors

CBO reasons that a rise in the minimum wage would have effects in aggregate consumption and this in turn would have effects on employment. The overall effect is estimated as an increase in employment between 30,000 and 50,000 jobs (“a few tens of thousands of jobs”). A narrative argument is provided for the mechanisms behind this effect.

The effects on consumption are separated into direct and indirect.

2.4.1 Direct effects on consumption

  • Job loses \(\Rightarrow\) reduction in consumption.
  • Increase wages \(\Rightarrow\) increase consumption.
  • Less profits for business owners and shareholders \(\Rightarrow\) reduction in consumption.
  • Increase prices \(\Rightarrow\) reduction in consumption.

Overall the direct effect on consumption is estimated[?] to be positive due to a higher marginal propensity to consume of the low wage individuals relative to high income ones.

2.4.2 Indirect effects on consumption

  • Increase in consumption \(\Rightarrow\) Increase investment in the future \(\Rightarrow\) Increase consumption in the future.
  • Increase prices of low-wage-intensive items \(\Rightarrow\) increase demand in other items \(\Rightarrow\) Bottleneck in other items until firms adjust.

Overall the indirect effect on consumption is estimated to be negative.

2.4.3 Overall effect on consumption and its effect on employment

CBO estimates [?] that the net effect on consumption would be positive and that its effect on employment would be between 30,000 and 50,000 additional jobs for 2016. This effects are estimated for the short run only. The methodology is mention to be similar to the one used to asses the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (found here)

2.4.4 Prevent double counting

The estimated elasticities in the literature already account for approximately 10% of the effects through consumption, so the final effect of consumption here is multiplied by 0.9 to prevent double counting.

\[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{OF} &= 40,000 \times 0.9 \end{aligned} \]

2.5 Computing effects on employment

Putting all these elements together we get: \[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{ \Delta E } &= \sum_{g\in\{A,T\}} \left( \widehat{ N^{final}_{g} } \times \widetilde{ \eta^{g}_{w\leq MW} }\times \overline{\%\Delta w^{g}} \right) - \widehat{OF} \end{aligned} \]

2.5.1 Code to compute each component

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Components of Elasticities
Adult Teen
\(\eta_{lit}\) 0.00 -0.01
\(\eta_{w \leq MW'}\) -0.02 -0.01
\(F_{adj}\) 4.50 4.50
\(\overline{\%\Delta w}\) 13.36 16.59
\(\widetilde{\eta_{w\leq MW}}\) -0.02 -0.04

Using all the components described above we get \(\widehat{ \Delta^{-} E } =\) -120 thousand jobs. The report however computes \(F^{g}_{adjs}\) in a different fashion and gets a value of 4.5 (when computing the values of \(F^{g}_{adjs}\) from the table below - as oppose to using historical values - we get \(\widehat{ \Delta^{-} E } =\) 6 thousand jobs).

3 Distributional effects

In the first step towards obtaining the policy estimates presented in the introduction we concluded with a figure of \(\widehat{ \Delta^{-} E } =\) -120 thousand jobs lost. We now turn to two additional key quantities: the wage gain among those who get a rise do to the new minimum wage, and the distribution of the losses that pay for that raise. The effect of both quantities is estimated at the level of family income.

3.1 Computing Family income

As the unit of interest now is the family and detailed information on income is needed, CBO performs the distributional analysis using a different data set from the Current Population Survey. Instead of the ORG, the following analysis uses the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of March 2013. This data contains income information for the year 2012.

3.1.0.1 Code to load the data and merge state minimum wages

To the CPS ASEC data we also merge the data on state minimum wages describe in section 2.1.4.3

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3.1.1 Computing wages in CPS ASEC 2013

The hourly wage (\(w\)) was computed as the ratio of yearly earnings (\(y\)) and the product of usual number of hours worked in a week (\(Hour.per.Week\)) and the number of weeks worked in a year (\(Weeks.per.Year\)). The CPS ASEC data set contains three variables for yearly earnings: incp_all, incp_ern, incp_wag corresponding to all income, earnings, and wages respectively. We choose incp_wag.

For this data set, the weights used in our analysis will be hhwgt.

\[ \begin{aligned} \hat{w} = \frac{\hat{y}}{\hat{Hours \, per \, Week} \times \hat{Weeks\,per\,Year}} \end{aligned} \]

3.1.1.1 Code for computing wages and descriptive statistics

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3.1.1.2 Adjusting wages 1

As with the CPS ORG, an adjustment for wages is applied. Unlike the previous modification, where the adjustments were over a fraction of the population (those who did not report an hourly wage), our understanding is that CBO adjust the wages of all the population in this case.

The formula for the adjustments are the same as those propose in equation \(\eqref{eq:2}\).

3.1.1.3 Forecasting wage

The wage forecast is the same methodology as in section 2. This methodology is applied to a different data set (CPS ASEC) and for one additional year (forecasting from 2012 to 2016) than with the CPS ORG data.

3.1.1.3.1 Code to forecast wages, workers
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3.1.1.3.2 Statistics and code behind figure 4
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Comparison of 2013 and 2016 under the status quo
2013 2016: status quo
Salary workers 122,593,557 129,545,571
Median wage 17.79 20.56
< 7.5 0.09 0.03
< 9 0.15 0.09
< 10.10 0.2 0.15
< 13 0.32 0.25
< 15 0.4 0.33

3.1.1.4 Adjusting wages 2

CBO mentions that “it found far fewer workers who would be directly affected by the change in the minimum wage than it had in its analysis of employment”, using the CPS ASEC we get 15% workers below the 10.10 threshold in 2016, while using the CPS ORG we get16% in 2016. Given that the differences are not so large, we do not perfomer this adjustment.

3.2 Imputing policy effects

3.2.1 Imputing wage gains

If the wage is below the proposed new minimum (10.10), we increase that wage up to 10.10 for all the eligible population.

3.2.1.1 Ripple effects

CBO applies an additional wage increase for wages that are in a neighborhood up to 50% of the max increase (\(+-0.5(10.10 - 7.25) = +- \$1.4\)). Thus, the final imputed wage is:

\[ \tilde{w} = \begin{cases} MW' + 0.5(w - 7.25) \quad if \quad w \in [8.7, 10.10) \\ w + 0.5(11.5 - w) \quad if \quad w \in [10.10, 11.5) \\ MW' \quad o/w \end{cases} \]

3.2.1.1.1 Code for new min wage with ripple effects
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3.2.1.2 Substracting non compliers

In section 2.2 we estimate that 10.6% of workers eligible for a rise would not receive such benefit. To account for this fraction of non compliers replace the same fraction of new wages with what would have receive under the status quo.

3.2.1.2.1 Code to substract non compliers
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After accounting for non compliance, the total number of workers that are potentially eligible for a raise is 24.2 million. Of that number 17.7 would have had a wage below the new minimum and 6.6 would have had a wage above 10.10, but receives a wage increase through ripple effects. We now impute job losses in order to obtain the final number of workers who benefit and lost from a raise in the minimum wage.

3.2.2 Imputing job losses

The imputation above so far is applied to all workers below the minimum wage (and the ripple effects). Now we need to remove the \(\widehat{\Delta E} = -0.12\) million workers by imputing them a wage of 0. CBO chose to not move the wage all the way to 0 but to cut it in half and apply such imputation to \(2 \times \widehat{\Delta E}\). When destroying jobs CBO argued that the effect would be heavier on teenagers and low wage adults.

3.2.2.1 Code to impute job loses

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So far we get a total wage gain (accounting for job losses) of 57.6 billion dollars (in 2016) and a total wage loss of 1.7 billions due to workers loosing their jobs. The funds that cover the wage gains have to come from either less profits for business or higher prices for consumers. In the next section we review the distribution of wage gains, wage losses and balance losses across the income distribution.

3.3 Computing family income under status quo and minimum wage increase

The family income forecast was computed as the sum of forecast wages and non-wage income: \[ \begin{aligned} \widehat{Y_{h}(2016|2013)} &= \sum_{i \in h} \left( g_{w}\hat{w} + \sum_{l}(g_{nw_{l}}\hat{nw_{l}}) \right) \end{aligned} \]

The other components of family income were forecast as follows: when a growth rate was available for the sub component (\(l\)) it was applied (the only one mentioned is interest and dividends), otherwise the growth rate was equal to the change in the price index for personal consumption

Additional information needed from CBO: how do they decompose the income.

3.3.1 Growth of non working population

Forecasts of population growth were the same for working population. For non working population, the growth rate was matched to CBO forecasts for that group.

3.3.1.1 Code to construct the final income variables

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3.3.2 Other income losses

Income losses from a reduction in profits (\(\Delta^{-}\pi\)) and an increase in aggregate prices (\(\Delta^{+}P\)) is estimated to be distributed as following: 1% of the losses for those below the poverty line (PL), 29% for those between 1 and 6 PL, and 70% for those above 6PL.

3.4 Other considerations

3.4.1 Economywide income effect

CBO argues that the overall effect on the economy is positive and of $2 billion dollars for 2016.

3.4.2 Quantifying loses

  • Mix gains and loses.
  • Output lost - increase in aggregate demand (!)
  • Net gain of 2 billion dollars.

3.4.3 Distributional effects

  • Only results, no methodology at all! This is probably the most important (and overlooked part of the report)

3.4.4 Interaction with other programs

No interactions with other programs is assumed (SNAP or EITC).

3.4.5 What is in the 2/3

  • CBO acknowledges uncertainty in the estimates of elasticity due to possible technological changes in the future.

4 Results

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4.1 Original format

Policy estimates in CBO report and Replication Results
Effects/Policy Estimates Replication
wage gains (billions of $) 31 59.1
wage losses (bns of $) ~5 3.8
Balance losses (bns of $) ~24 53.2
Net effect (bns of $) 2 2
# of Wage gainers (millions) 16.5 24.2/17.7
#of Wage losers (millions) 0.5 0.1
Balance losses (bns of $) Replication Net effect (bns of $) Replication NE
<1PL ~0.3 0.5 5 20.7
[1PL, 3PL) ~3.4 7.7 12 17.9
[3PL, 6PL) ~3.4 7.7 2 0
>6PL ~17 37.3 -17 -36.5

4.2 Suggested new format

Our first proposal is to combine all gains and losses in one figure. Figure

Figure 5

Figure 5

Describe alternative 2

Describe alternative 3

Final replication output

Learn more

4.3 Sensitivity Analysis

Now it is possible to conduct a sensitivity analysis for each component used in the policy analysis. For this exercise it is particularly useful to have all of the outputs of the policy analysis (policy estimates) in the same units, and to clearly identify the dimensions to be normatively aggregated by policy makers.

For our case study, the original CBO report presented the benefits and costs in different units: wage gains specific for families that have a net wage increase due to the new minimum wage, wage losses for specific families that have net wage decrease due to job loss, and average income lost for all families that is used to pay for the wage increase, labeled from now on balance losses, and distributed across poverty line bins (less than one FPL, between one and three FPL, etc).

Taking the DD to the highest level of TR in the workflow standard implies that these benefits and costs have to be translated into the same units. For this purpose all of the policy estimates are expressed in terms of average per-capita income gain/loss, across quintiles of income.

With five quintiles and three types of policy estimates (net wage gain, net wage loss, and balance loss), the dimensions of the analysis becomes too large even when looking at a few parameters. As an illustration of how all dimensions could be condensed into a single number, I model the different valuations of hypothetical policy makers using additive weights for each policy estimate and weights to account for different redistributional preferences. The result is a welfare function (\(W(\cdot)\)) that combines all of the policy estimates and personal valuations of a given policy maker.

Formally, \(W\) can be defined as the weighted sum of policy estimates for the wage gain (\(wg_{i}\)), wage losses (\(wl_{i}\)) and balance losses (\(bl_{i}\)) across all individuals, where each policy estimate receives a weight \(\omega_{wg}, \omega_{wl}, \omega_{bl}\), and the distributional preferences are a function of the income quintile of each individual \(\omega^{d}_{i}(Q_{i}, \rho)\):

\[ \begin{equation} W(\rho) = \sum_{i \in N} \left( \omega_{wg} wg_{i} + \omega_{wl} wl_{i} + \omega_{bl} bl_{i} \right) \omega^{d}_{i}(Q_{i}, \rho) \\ \text{with:}\nonumber \\ \omega^{d}_{i}(Q_{i}, \rho) = \frac{(1 - \rho(Q_{i} - Q_{median}) ) }{\sum_{i} \omega^{d}_{i}(Q_{i}) } Q_{max} \quad \text{for } \rho \in \left(-\frac{1}{2}, \frac{1}{2} \right) \nonumber \label{NPE} \tag{N} \end{equation} \]

\(Q_i\) represent the quintile in the income distribution (1 the lowest and \(Q_{max}=5\) the highest), and \(\rho\) parametrizes the preferences towards redistribution (\(\rho<0\) dislikes redistribution, \(\rho>0\) likes redistribution). The parameter \(\rho\) is restricted to values between \(-\frac{1}{2}\) and \(\frac{1}{2}\) so all weights are strictly positive. This function was designed ad-hoc only to illustrate a possible set of preferences used by policy makers when observing the policy estimates.


  1. The report presents smaller estimates for the $9.00 dollar option (-0.075). The rationale is that a smaller increase (in magnitude but also not indexed by inflation, and with later implementation than the 10.10 option) will allow firms to adjust other margins before reducing employment.

  2. CBO calculated the fraction of teenagers with earnings below the minimum wage from 1979 to 2009 and the result came to about a third. Then they look at the average change in earnings for teenagers subject to the minimum wage over the same period, and compared that to the nominal change in each variation of the minimum wage. This ratio came to be about 1.5. With this the final estimates for the elasticity for teenagers came to be 4.5 (\(1.5/(1/3)\)) times higher than what is estimated in the literature.