TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of minimum wages on self-reported physical and mental health
in China
AU - Liu, Dan
AU - ROBONE, SILVANA MARIA
AU - Turati, Gilberto
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - We exploit provincial variation in minimum wages allowed by the 2004 Chinese regulation to study the impact of
minimum wages on the health of workers. We use data from Wave 1 of the World Health Organization’s Study on
Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted in 2007–2010. We consider measures of self-reported health in
ten domains and a measure of general health obtained from a factor analysis as dependent variables when
estimating ordered probit models and linear models, respectively. We find that real minimum wages have a
small, but not negligible, negative effect on most of the health outcomes and general health. The result is robust
to several controls, including reporting heterogeneity. The negative effect on health is driven by the deterioration
of working conditions, due to the increase in the number of days worked per week for public and private
employees.
AB - We exploit provincial variation in minimum wages allowed by the 2004 Chinese regulation to study the impact of
minimum wages on the health of workers. We use data from Wave 1 of the World Health Organization’s Study on
Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted in 2007–2010. We consider measures of self-reported health in
ten domains and a measure of general health obtained from a factor analysis as dependent variables when
estimating ordered probit models and linear models, respectively. We find that real minimum wages have a
small, but not negligible, negative effect on most of the health outcomes and general health. The result is robust
to several controls, including reporting heterogeneity. The negative effect on health is driven by the deterioration
of working conditions, due to the increase in the number of days worked per week for public and private
employees.
UR - https://iris.uniupo.it/handle/11579/195962
U2 - 10.1016/j.econmod.2024.106865
DO - 10.1016/j.econmod.2024.106865
M3 - Article
SN - 0264-9993
VL - 141
JO - Economic Modelling
JF - Economic Modelling
IS - 106865
ER -