Prospective associations between the state minimum wage and cognitive function in older Americans

Limited research has explored how social policies influence cognitive function at older ages. This study examined the association between the U.S. state minimum wage and subsequent cognitive function among older American adults.

Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, we studied non-self-employed workers who were aged 50-75 without dementia at baseline and followed between 1998 and 2020 (N = 7263). We employed fixed-effects linear models to estimate associations between the state minimum wage and cognitive function, measured by the modified version of Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS; higher values indicating better cognitive function), using 2, 6, and 10-year lags. We further stratified our models by levels of earning wages, working hours, race/ethnicity, and sex.

Among all workers (n = 7263), the state minimum wage was not associated with cognitive function (β = 0.05; 95% CI = -0.01 to 0.12). However, for low-wage workers (n = 880) and part-time workers (n = 1432), a $1 higher state minimum wage was associated with a 0.29 point (95% CI = 0.14 to 0.45, p = .001) and a 0.17 point (95% CI = 0.04 to 0.30, p = .014) higher TICS score 6 years later, respectively, controlling for time-invariant individual factors and time-varying individual- and state-level covariates. Among Hispanic low-wage workers, a higher state minimum wage was associated with lower cognitive function in a 2-year lagged model (β = -0.41; 95% CI = -0.77 to -0.06) but with higher cognitive function in a 6-year lagged model (β = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.79, p = .036).

Our findings suggest that increases in the state minimum wage may benefit the cognitive health of low-earning older adults, though heterogeneities by race/ethnicity may exist.