Minimum wage increases and SNAP participation: evidence from Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance

A large and contested body of research examines how minimum wage laws affect employment and earnings for different groups of workers and industries. Far less studied are the important but ambiguous expectations about minimum wage effects on participation in safety net programs. Different scenarios of minimum wage effects on employment and earnings could produce positive, negative, or null effects on participation in means-tested programs. This study examines the relationship between the minimum wage in Seattle, Washington and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a vital component of the U.S. safety net that provides food aid to more than 40 million Americans. Using two increases in the Seattle minimum wage and merged, longitudinal administrative data from Washington State, we estimate a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences estimate of the effect of minimum wage increases on SNAP participation and benefit levels. We find mostly null results: during the initial implementation of the minimum wage, SNAP benefit levels declined by an upper bound of 4.3% among workers in low-wage jobs compared to pre-policy baseline levels and similar workers outside of Seattle. Declines were concentrated among younger (18–24 year-olds) and female workers. Declines in benefit levels did not coincide with changes in SNAP participation overall and were borne by workers receiving the greatest SNAP benefits at baseline. For this group, increases in earnings offset reductions in SNAP benefit levels. Overall, our results suggest only modest negative effects of the minimum wage on SNAP benefits, which were offset by increases in earnings.