State Minimum Wages and Food Insecurity Among Households Receiving Government Food Assistance

While the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aims to reduce food insecurity among low-income households, nearly half of recipients remain food insecure. Increasing state minimum wages could help improve food security, but because SNAP benefits are income-dependent, net effects are unclear.

Using the US Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (2002-2019), we linked households interviewed in two consecutive Decembers to create a 2-year panel. The primary sample included SNAP recipient households with at least one adult working in year 1. The exposure was the average effective state minimum wage (2019 $) for each state and year. We estimated prevalence differences in food insecurity per $1 increase in minimum wage using a within-household linear fixed-effects model adjusting for time-varying economic confounders and concurrent safety-net policies. We investigated variation in the effect by household and family structure, race and ethnicity, and educational attainment using stratified models.

Overall estimates were most compatible with protective effects (prevalence difference per 10,000 households: -298, 95% confidence interval [CI]: -673, 77). The strongest protective estimates were for senior-headed (-1,472, 95% CI: -2,869, -76), Hispanic (-865, 95% CI: -1,638, -92), and some college households (-988, 95% CI: -1,664, -312). Estimates for Indigenous households were imprecise and possibly harmful (900, 95% CI: -736, 2,537). Most other subgroup estimates were near zero.

Increased minimum wages may modestly support food security for working SNAP households. As SNAP benefit rules evolve, these findings suggest that minimum-wage policies can complement and reinforce the program's goals to protect low-income households from food hardship.