Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Qi Ge

Abstract

The amount of money that the United States spends annually on the welfare program Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been on the rise over the last two decades. In tandem with this increase is a trend for a greater portion of Americans falling below the poverty line. This study has looked at the effect that minimum wage has on decreasing or reversing this trend. Two types of models are used U.S. Regression and State Difference-in-Difference. The dependent variables being tested for were percent of population on SNAP and change in per-capita expenditure on SNAP. The findings from these models indicate that there is a correlation between the minimum wage and SNAP expenditure and participation reduction. The policy implications from this study are that the minimum wage should be increased as a measure to reduce government spending on SNAP.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Included in

Economics Commons

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