Minimum wages and alcohol consumption: Evidence from Canadian longitudinal microdata.

Objective: The objective is to estimate the effect of provincial minimum wage increases in Canada on heavy drinking, binge drinking and average daily alcohol consumption.

Method: We estimate standard regression models by gender-age group with drinking behaviours as the dependent variables and the minimum wage among the independent variables. We employ the Canadian National Population Health Survey which began in 1994 and ended in 2011, a period comparable to that used by many U.

Chinese minimum wages and health.

Variation in the timing of changes in the minimum wage across provinces in China is exploited using individual/household longitudinal survey data from 2010 to 2018 to examine potential health effects on working age individuals in households that are likely affected by minimum wages. Minimum wage increases are estimated to improve self-reported health particularly by reducing the incidence of self-reported overall poor health. There is also reasonably strong evidence that they reduce unhappiness and lower dissatisfaction with less robust evidence that they improve mental health and lower recent discomfort.

State-level association between income inequality and mortality in the USA, 1989-2019: ecological study.

Background: Prior studies have shown a positive relationship between income inequality and population-level mortality. This study investigates whether the relationship between US state-level income inequality and all-cause mortality persisted from 1989 to 2019 and whether changes in income inequality were correlated with changes in mortality rates.

Methods: We perform repeated cross-sectional regressions of mortality on state-level inequality measures (Gini coefficients) at 10-year intervals.

Income inequality and population health: a political-economic research agenda.

There is more than 30 years of research on relationships between income inequality and population health. In this article, we propose a research agenda with five recommendations for future research to refine existing knowledge and examine new questions. First, we recommend that future research prioritise analyses with broader time horizons, exploring multiple temporal aspects of the relationship.

Top income shares in Canada: recent trends and policy implications.

According to Canadian taxfiler data, over the last thirty years there has been a surge in the income shares of the top 1%, top 0.1% and top 0.01% of income recipients, even with longitudinal smoothing by individual using three- or five-year moving averages.

The effects of drug subsidies on out-of-pocket prescription drug expenditures by seniors: regional evidence from Canada.

Between 1970 and 1986, all Canadian provinces introduced some version of a prescription drug subsidy for those aged 65 years or over and since 1986, all the provinces have increased copayments or deductibles to some degree. Employing a first-order approximation to the welfare gains from a subsidy, we find evidence that these subsidies have been less redistributive than an absolute per household cash transfer but slightly more redistributive than a transfer that would increase each household's income by the same percentage. Such evidence may have relevance for predicting the redistributive effects of a potential national prescription drug plan for seniors in the US.