Year: 2024
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: We examine the potential secondary impacts of raising the minimum wage in a jurisdiction on the efficiency of its foster care placement system. We employ the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) restricted‐access dataset representing all children in the US foster care system for the years 2000–21. We calculate placement efficiency as the number of yearly moves experienced by a child in the foster care system, with a decrease in the number of placements interpreted as benefitting children both psychologically and behaviourally. This increase in stability benefits the foster parents and corresponds to a smaller financial strain on the public. After including various controls and state‐year fixed effects, our Tobit and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) analyses find that increased minimum wages are significantly associated with lower levels of placement disruption. We take this as promising initial descriptive evidence for the secondary effects of the minimum wage on reducing the financial burden, and increasing the placement efficiency, of the foster care system.
Source: Economic Affairs
DOI: 10.1111/ecaf.12671
Authors: Florence Neymotin, William Hawks
Institution: Nova Southeastern University
Language: English
Topic: Child Welfare and Adoption
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4403353591