Overall and race-specific associations between state-level minimum wage policy and food insecurity in the United States

Background In the USA, states can set higher minimum wages than the federal government. We investigated the association between state minimum wages and racial/ethnic inequities in food insecurity. Methods Household-level food insecurity and sociodemographic data were obtained from the cross-sectional Current Population Survey 2015-2019 (n=189 665 households) and merged by state and year with minimum wage and cost-of-living data obtained from the US Department of Labor and US Bureau of Economic Analysis, respectively. We fitted Poisson regression models with robust standard errors with 12-month or 30-day household food insecurity as the outcome, and minimum wage or inflation-adjusted minimum wage (ie, real wage) as the predictor, adjusting for cost of living, sociodemographic covariates and state fixed-effects. We tested interactions between minimum wage and race/ethnicity and ran race/ethnicity-stratified models. Results In adjusted models, the real wage was not associated with 12-month or 30-day food insecurity. Minimum wage was associated with 5% lower prevalence rate of 12-month food insecurity (PR 0.95, 95% CI=0.93 to 0.98) and 7% lower prevalence rate of 30-day food insecurity (PR 0.93, 95% CI 0.91 to 0.96) for all households. The interaction p values for race/ethnicity with real wage and minimum wage were p<0.001. In stratified models, results were statistically significant for minimum wage and 12-month food insecurity among non-Hispanic (NH) white households (PR 0.93, 95% CI 0.89 to 0.96) and Hispanic households (PR 0.95, 95% CI 0.92 to 0.98), and minimum wage and 30-day food insecurity among NH white (PR 0.92, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.96), NH black (PR 0.94, 95% CI 0.89 to 0.99) and Hispanic (PR 0.90, 95% CI 0.85 to 0.95) households. Conclusions Higher state-level minimum wages, but not real wages, were associated with lower food insecurity prevalence overall and for racial/ethnic subgroups.