So conclude researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center in a
new study. Using publicly available datasets such as the American Community Survey, and state public assistance enrollment data, including Food Stamps, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), TANF, and the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, for a four-year period (2007-2011), the study authors were able to determine that, for families of front-line fast food workers earning $8.69 per hour (median):
- more than one-half were enrolled in one or more of the public programs compared to 25% of the workforce as a whole;
- the cost of such assistance is almost $7 billion per year, with spending on Medicaid and SCHIP accounting for more than half of this figure;
- one in five had income below the federal poverty level and 43% had income of two times the federal poverty level or less (the current poverty level for a family of three is $19,530 yearly); and
- more than half of the full-time workers’ families were enrolled in public assistance programs.
The report also looked at how restaurant workers compared to workers in other industries in their receipt of public assistance. While families in which a member was working in the fast food industry had the highest enrollments of any industry (44%), those in which a member worked in a public administration job had the lowest need for assistance (15%), with the enrollment in all job sectors at 25%.
The authors point to their findings as support for raising the federal minimum wage, which would both help improve living standards as well as reduce expenditures on assistance programs.
