Most in rural areas are impoverished as small is small. But to also note "Disabilities are more common in rural areas." Mainly because of the excessive work ethic of working hard ending in going right into a disability over the low pay. Lack of money also makes a lace of self care making unhealthy workers going right into a disability...
All related to low pay!
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/six-charts-illustrate-divide-rural-urban-america
So living a low life is low and low helps no one! Raise the minimum wage as we are too low? Well yes as what is going to give? It's not fair to business to lower their prices to match the poverty wages of the town or just sale nothing because the people can't afford it spending what they earn, nothing! So the point if no raising wages is going down as it's not up and low is what everyone should expect!
"Conventional wisdom says otherwise, and so do business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. An increase in the minimum wage makes it more costly for an employer to hire an additional worker. Employers looking to maximize their profit will, in theory, hire fewer workers when the minimum wage rises." Not nothing that the higher wages is everyone in town and should not be looked at as just a few workers looking to hire. A big pot of people that spend what thy earn. Like how bigger towns have more that smaller rural towns have. Why is that?
And I should note they raised minimum wage many times in the past and we all are still here noting we have better stuff than we did back then! Going up is up and low is low!
~~~~~Here’s the effect a $15 minimum wage has on jobs and poverty in low-income areas, according to a new study from Berkeley.
A $15 an hour minimum wage won’t slash jobs in low-income areas, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, and it will also help to reduce poverty.
The study, conducted by Anna Godoey and Michael Reich, economists at UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, suggests that a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 would not reduce employment rates, weekly hours worked, or annual weeks worked. The study notes that $15 an hour in 2024 is roughly equivalent to $13 an hour today.
In their paper, Godoey and Reich suggested a few reasons why minimum wage increases do not necessarily lead to a loss of low-wage jobs. These include price increases in the restaurant and retail industries, which generally have a lot of minimum wage jobs, and the fact that low-wage workers who are paid more simply have more money to spend and put back into the economy.
Researchers analyzed the effects of more than 50 wage changes
The Berkeley researchers used data from the American Community Survey (ACS), administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, in their study. They said its large sample size — 3 million homes a year — made it a better tool than the Current Population Survey, which surveys just 100,000.
With the data, they studied the effects of 51 minimum wage changes in 750 counties in 45 states between 2004 and 2016. Increases in the minimum wage in “high-exposure areas” — places where many employees work minimum-wage jobs and are thus particularly affected by changes — lead to higher wages without “a corresponding reduction in employment or hours,” the study authors wrote.
Raising wages in these low-income areas also led to a decline in household and child poverty. “Our estimates suggest a 10% increase in the minimum wage would reduce household poverty rates by 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points in the highest impact areas,” Godoey said.
Another recent study showed a similar result. In February 2018, the London School of Economics released research that examined minimum wage changes in the U.S. between 1979 and 2016. That study concluded that minimum wage increases did not significantly change the number of low-wage jobs.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/15-minimum-wage-reduces-poverty-doesnt-cut-jobs-berkeley-study-says-2019-07-08
