The impact of increasing the United Kingdom national minimum wage on self-reported health.

Abstract

There is a growing but mixed literature on the health effects of minimum wages. If minimum wage changes have a statistically significant impact on health, this suggests health effects should be incorporated into cost‐benefit analyses to capture wider policy impacts. Whilst most existing UK based literature examines the introduction of a minimum wage, this paper exploits the 2016, 2017 and 2018 UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) increases as natural experiments using a series of difference‐in‐differences models. Short Form‐12 (SF‐12) mental and physical component summary scores are used as dependent variables. In the base case and all sensitivity analyses, the estimated impact of NMW increases on mental and physical health are insignificant. The policy implication is that health effects should not be included in cost‐benefit analyses examining the NMW.