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Minimum Wage in America: A Timeline
Since 1938, the U.S. federal government has established that workers are entitled to a base hourly wage. Which workers receive that minimum—and how much—has remained a political issue.

When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, it represented a major shift in labor policy. For the first time, the federal government set a minimum wage and established the principle that people—or at least those covered by the law—are entitled to at least a certain amount of pay for their work.

The federal minimum applies to U.S. workers who are employed by companies with revenues of at least $500,000, plus workers in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, government agencies, and those who are involved in interstate commerce in their jobs.

One reason that the federal minimum wage provokes continuing controversy is that it doesn’t automatically adjust to the rising cost of living. “This means it is completely dependent upon political negotiations, and its level depended upon which forces had power,” explains Stephanie Luce, the chairperson and a professor in the School of Labor and Urban Studies at City University of New York.

Since the first federal minimum wage was set in 1938, it has been raised 22 times by 12 different presidents. The history of the federal minimum wage is one of political struggle and labor conflict, and it actually begins in Europe, at least a century before the law was passed in the United States.

Here are some of highlights.
Push for Minimum Wage Begins in Europe, New Zealand

1831: Silk industry workers in Lyon, France go on strike. Their demands include a minimum wage that is enough for them to live on. The walkout—and a repeat three years later—are unsuccessful, but the idea of a minimum wage continues to resonate.


1894: New Zealand enacts the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, becoming the first nation in the world in which the government sets minimum wages for workers. The law also bans both worker strikes and lockouts by employers.



Samuel Gompers, an early labor leader and founder and president of the American Federation of Labor, circa 1890.

Underwood Archives/Getty Image

1898: Samuel Gompers, founding president of the American Federation of Labor, publishes an article entitled “A Minimum Living Wage,” in which he advocates not just setting a legal threshold for wages, but also requiring it to be enough for workers to live.
Massachusetts Enacts First US Minimum Wage

1912: The state of Massachusetts enacts the first law in the United States requiring a minimum wage. Other states soon follow.

1923: In a case called Adkins v. Children's Hospital of D. C., the U.S. Supreme Court rules that imposing a minimum wage violates employers’ and workers’ liberty of contract right under the Fifth Amendment. That invalidates states’ minimum wage laws and limits them to offering advice to employers who can set their own standards.
FDR Champions Minimum Wage Codes

1933: Newly-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, eager to improve the lot of workers suffering in the Great Depression, convinces Congress to enact the National Industrial Recovery Act. The NIRA suspends antitrust restrictions and allows industries to enforce their own fair-trade codes, which raise wages.

President Roosevelt signing the Industrial Control-Public 
Works bill, otherwise known as the National Recovery Act.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The cotton industry is the first to enact such a code, which sets a minimum weekly wage of $13 in northern states and $12 in the south, in addition to abolishing child labor. Roosevelt also pushes employers to sign the “President’s Reemployment Agreement,” a pledge to offer a $12 to $15 weekly wage for 35 to 40 hours of labor. Employers who agree get to display a badge of hour, which depicts a blue eagle with the motto, “We Do Our Part.”

1935: In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court strikes down the industry codes that the NIRA had enabled, including their minimum wage provisions. As a result, the minimum wage becomes a big issue in the 1936 presidential election, with the incumbent, FDR, promising a renewed push.
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Minimum Wage in 'Big Switch'

1937: In a turnaround, the Supreme Court narrowly upholds Washington state’s minimum wage law, when Justice Owen Roberts unexpectedly sides with the court’s four-member liberal minority. The case, West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, involved a former chambermaid who sued a hotel for $216.19 in back wages that she said she was owed under the law. The “big switch,” as it’s called by historians, reverses the judicial trend and establishes that minimum wage laws don’t violate the Constitution.

1938: After a legislative struggle, Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes a federal minimum wage of 25 cents per hour, and the bill is signed into law by President Roosevelt. Originally, the legislation had called for a 40-cent-per-hour wage, but it was scaled back to win the support of members of Congress from southern states.

Even in the law’s compromise form, it represented a major philosophical shift, according to John Revitte, a professor of Work, Leisure and Labor Studies at Michigan State University. “America had a long tradition in which issues between the employer and the employee were their concern,” he explains. “The New Deal was saying, these are also the concerns of the government.”
Federal Minimum Wage Is Increased, Expanded

1949: Congress raises the federal minimum wage to 75 cents, the first of numerous increases enacted over the next six decades.

Billboard sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers 
reading "World's Highest Wages - There's no way like the 
American Way," photographed by Dorothea Lange when 
working for the FSA as part of Roosevelt's New Deal.
SSPL/Getty Images

1961: Congress amends the FLSA to cover more workers, but also allows retail and service businesses to hire full time students at wages of 15 percent below the minimum, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s history of changes to the law.

1963: President Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to specify that workers covered by the federal minimum wage requirement were also entitled to equal pay for the same job, regardless of gender. The Associated Press reports that eight million women are among the 27 million U.S. workers covered.

1968: The federal minimum wage peaks in purchasing power at $1.60 per hour, the equivalent of $11.53 in 2019 dollars. With the minimum wage was higher relative to living costs, Luce says, “Poverty of that period tended to be more of an issue of unemployment, rather than low-wage working poverty.” After 1968, the minimum wage doesn’t keep up with rising inflation.


1974: Congress again broadens the minimum wage law to cover all non-supervisory government workers.

1989: Congress changes FLSA so that it applies only to businesses that produce at least $500,000 in revenue, but also mandates that smaller retail businesses are subject to the law as well during any work week in which they either engage in interstate commerce or make goods that will be sold in other states.

2009: Thanks to legislation passed two years earlier, the federal minimum wage rises to $7.25.
Eight States Raise Minimum Wage Above Federal

2016: New York and California legislators pass laws raising their minimum wages to $15 per hour.

2019: Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C. maintain higher minimum wages than the federal standard as of 2019, with eight states automatically increasing wages based on the cost of living.


BY

UPDATED:OCT 28, 2019ORIGINAL:OCT 18, 2019

SEN BERNIE SANDERS I DID IT MY WAY

Sanders draws an oversized crowd to talk student debt, minimum wage, Medicare

By Logan Kahler, Managing Editor lkahler@newsrepublican.com
Posted Jan 5, 2020

BOONE — Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders talked to a packed house of approximately 400 people at the Fareway Conference Center at Cobblestone Inn & Suites Sunday morning, where he said the goals he has for the country are not “unrealistic.”

Sanders was greeted by a roar of applause and responded by taking a moment to note what his hopes are for the country.

“You’re probably wondering, how did we get to where we are and maybe most importantly, where do we want to go?” Sanders said. “I’m here to tell you how we’re going to get there.”

“What makes our campaign different than others for a number of reasons—one is to tell the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont to think a little bit outside of the box,” Sanders said. “Our motives may sound untraditional, but they’re certainly not unrealistic.”

During the event which was promoted as being a brunch, an attendee in the crowd took the microphone to profess her struggle with student loan debt as she pursued education to become a veterinarian. Throughout vet school, she had collectively gathered about $360,000 in student loans, the woman said.

Sanders said that when he is elected, he will cancel all the $1.6 trillion student loan debt to all Americans, as well as make universities tuition free.

“We are seeing young people delaying marriage, having children, unable to buy a car or even a house because of outrageous student loan debt,” said Sanders. “Think about it, we need veterinarians, doctors, but they shouldn’t be punished for the rest of their lives because they have an education.”

Sanders said the massive amount of student loan debt could easily be to blame for the weak economy. He said student loan debt is a financial burden not only on the individual but on the country and its economy.”

In an unheard-of comment from Sanders, he stated there was one thing he is happy for from Donald Trump and that’s the economy is actually picking up. There are more jobs now than when Trump became president, Sanders said.

“But just because there are more jobs, doesn’t mean that people can thrive..That’s why we need to raise the minimum wage to $15.”

According to the Bernie Sanders communications team, the event projected to have a crowd of 150, but a final verified count revealed a total of 431 people. For context, 800 people caucused in the city of Boone in 2016.

Many of those in attendance Sunday were drawn to Boone from all over because of their interest in Sanders’ health coverage policy.

Sanders told a story about a woman he met on the campaign trail who had undergone treatments for cancer. Because of the disease, she had to quit her job, lose her insurance, resulting in her death from the inability to pay her hospital bills.

“You see people all over the country putting their lives on hold because something with their health comes up,” Sanders said. “The drug companies have a grip on the costs of life-saving medications that we the American need to survive.”

“And that’s just not right.”

Professionals in the healthcare field have varied opinions on Sanders’ beliefs.

“I really like Bernie because he’s older and more experienced than the other candidates,” said Helen Clark of Ogden. “And he can beat Trump.”

Clark, 61, of Ogden, is a physical therapist who has been in healthcare for 40 years. She traveled to Boone to see Sanders as he is one of her top picks for her vote, second to former Vice President Joe Biden.

After listening to his platform on universal health coverage, Clark said it made more sense to her.

“Being in healthcare for 40 years, I can see how the lack of healthcare can make an impact on people,” Clark said. “I’m still a Democrat and I’m not-for-profit, and that’s why our healthcare system is the way it is—it’s all for profit.”

Others in the room said also said they support changes in the country’s healthcare system but were skeptical on the candidate’s claims he’d make healthcare affordable for everyone.

“I really don’t see how he’s going to be able to make healthcare for all affordable,” said Robert Hedges. “There’s a large portion of Americans who don’t work and won’t be able to pay for it.”

Hedges, 70, of Ames, retired from his career as a family physician and is currently enrolled in Medicaid A, B and D for his drugs.

Sanders’ Medicare for all Act was proposed in 2019 and would offer health care to all Americans without deductibles, random bills and co-pays.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Americans spend more than $10,000 per capita on health care, while countries that have universal healthcare, like Canada, France and Germany, pay less than $5,000.

Sanders will be back in Iowa on Jan. 14 for the Democratic debate at Drake University Campus in Des Moines, just three weeks before Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucuses.

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Will A Minimum Wage Hike Boost Mexico’s Struggling Economy?


A BMW's employee is pictured working on a BMW car assembly process in a

 guided visit during the ... [+]AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

So far Mexico’s popular but polarizing president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has failed to kick-start broad-based economic growth and has focused instead on delivering increases to the country’s minimum wage on two separate occasions. Lopez Obrador raised Mexico’s minimum wage by 16% in 2019 and by additional 20% at the start of 2020.

“We continue to gradually recover the value that the minimum salary has lost over time. This is an important increase,” Lopez Obrador explained.

The move is an attempt to ameliorate the deep divisions that continue to define Mexico’s economy. Mexico has transformed over the last thirty years, buoyed by success in attracting investment in the electronics, automotive and aerospace sectors. But, while the products Mexico’s fabricates and exports have become ever more complex, overall wages in Mexico remain very low in comparison to other OECD countries. In 2018 a minimum wage worker in Mexico took home just over $2,000, around a tenth of the salary earned by minimum wage workers in France, the U.K. and Canada, and less than half of the take-home pay of minimum wage workers in Brazil and Colombia.

Overall, among industrial economies Mexico has become an anomaly for tolerating minimum wages that are dismally low by global standards. Stagnant wages have helped Mexico maintain competitiveness with China in low productivity, labor-intensive work, but low wages have also stifled the growth of a domestic market for goods and services.

Mexico’s new minimum wage won’t affect most workers but will still impact a few million families. In the third quarter of 2019 Mexico recorded nearly 10 million workers earning less than the minimum wage salary.

In 2020 minimum wage workers in Mexico will now take home 123.22 pesos (around $6.50) per day. The increase is notable, but Mexico’s daily minimum wage will still be around half of the hourly minimum wage in Arizona and California.

According to official statistics the wage hike will help at least three million people. But, it’s difficult to measure the impact of the wage hike since many workers in Mexico are employed by small family-run companies and receive cash salaries under the table. Overall in Mexico over 56% of the workforce is employed in informal sector jobs. In the under-developed south the problem is even more acute. In Chiapas, the poorest state in Mexico, a major target of attention for Lopez Obrador, over 73% of workers are employed in informal jobs. Overall in Mexico 99% of employers are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and while a few major employers may be affected by the new minimum wage laws, the salary increase isn’t likely to catalyze broad improvements for the bulk of the population. Economists are still trying to predict whether the increase in the minimum wage in Mexico could have an impact on inflation or affect hiring in formal sector jobs.

To ask about the impact of Mexico’s new minimum wage law, I reached out to David Kaplan, Senior Labor Markets Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Nathaniel Parish Flannery: When we look at Mexico's labor market in the NAFTA-era we see signs of wage stagnation. How significant is this wage hike?

David Kaplan: Overall, Mexican wages are quite low compared to the rest of Latin America, and much lower than in countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. In 2018, in terms of average hourly wages, Mexico sat in 14th place out of the 17 Latin-American countries analyzed in the IDB’s Labor Markets and Social Security Information System, despite being the fourth richest country in terms of GDP per capita. Average wages have increased a bit in recent years but are still below 2005 levels in real terms.

A 20% increase of the minimum wage from 2019 to 2020 is obviously significant when inflation is below 3%, but in 2020 Mexico will still have one of the lowest minimum wages in the region, significantly lower than in countries with similar levels of GDP per capital like Argentina or Chile. In November of 2019, 16% of formal workers were registered with a wage less than or equal to the 2020 minimum wage. The 2020 minimum wage is equal to 54% of the median formal wage in November of 2019, which does not seem alarmingly high by international standards. For these reasons my impression is that the 2020 minimum wage will likely not be high enough to reduce formal employment in a significant way.

It is worthwhile to also consider the timing of the minimum-wage increase. Real GDP growth over the first three quarters of 2019 was close to zero. From May 2017 to May 2018, employment registered with social security increased by 4.5%. From November 2018 to November 2019, employment registered with social security grew by only 1.7%. The fact that this ambitious increase of the minimum wage comes at a time of zero economic growth and extremely sluggish growth of formal employment lends more credence to concerns of a negative impact on formal employment.

Parish Flannery: Mexico's economy is characterized by having high levels of labor market informality. What impact will this wage increase have on states in Mexico's south where the majority of people work in informal jobs?

Kaplan: A minimum-wage increase is more likely to reduce formal employment in low-wage areas, which also tend to be high-informality areas. The 2020 minimum wage is more than 60% of the November 2019 median wage in 11 states and more than two thirds of the November 2019 median wage in four states. A recent report for the UK government by Arindrajit Dube suggests that one may become more concerned about the negative impacts of minimum wages when they reach these levels.

It is useful to analyze the impact of the 2019 increase of the minimum wage at the northern border where the daily minimum wage was doubled from 88.36 pesos in 2018 to 176.72 pesos in 2019. The 2019 minimum wage at the northern border was 81.3% of the November 2018 median wage. The first impact evaluation by the Minimum Wage Commission has not shown a significant impact on formal employment, although it will be important to replicate this analysis over a longer timeframe. In general, given that an even more ambitious increase of the minimum wage at the northern border in 2019 appears to have generated small effects on formal employment, my impression is that the 2020 generalized increase of the minimum wage will not cause important reductions of formal employment, even in low-wage states.

It is also worth noting that there is an economic model that would predict that an increase of the minimum wage could increase formal employment. If employers have excessive bargaining power in the labor market, which economists call monopsony power, the increase of wages of formal jobs could attract workers from informal jobs. Some support for this hypothesis can be found in a recent study from the United States by Jose Azar, Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Ioana Marinescu, Bledi Taska, and Till von Wachter.

Parish Flannery: Overall, what impact do you expect this wage increase to have on Mexico's economy?

Kaplan: I am extremely confident that the increase of the minimum wage will not have an important effect on inflation. The minimum wage at the northern border increased by 94.2% in real terms from November 2018 to November 2019. The average real wage for jobs registered with social security increased by only 10%. Given that the generalized minimum-wage increase in 2020 will be about 17%, it seems unlikely to me that the average real wage will increase by more than 4%. We saw average wages grow by 3.5% in 2019 overall, including the border region. So, any inflationary pressure should be manageable for the Central Bank, particularly since the annual inflation rate is currently below 3% and the annual core inflation rate has fallen from 3.85% in June to 3.65% in November. Of course, one would expect that an increase of the minimum wage would have a larger percentage effect on the wages of low-wage workers.

I am fairly confident that the increase of the minimum wage will not have an important impact on aggregate formal employment for the reasons I mentioned in my answers to the previous two questions, although the fact that the increase comes at a time when the labor market is showing clear signs of weakness is a reason for some concern. There is an economic argument developed by Daron Acemoglu that a minimum wage set to a meaningful but moderate level can cause firms to invest more in worker training and in new technologies, but I would not be confident making such a prediction.

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Follow me on Twitter. Check out some of my other work here.

Nathaniel Parish Flannery
I am a Latin America focused political analyst and writer. I split my time between New York City and Mexico City. My book, Searching For Modern Mexico, was published in 2019. I have written feature articles and op-eds on business, organized crime, and politics for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Americas Quarterly, Fortune and a number of other publications. I have a Master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA). In the last few years I've had the chance to work on projects in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, India and China.

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USA
When Prices Increase, But The Minimum Wage Has Not
By EDITOR •



The federal minimum wage hasn't gone up since 2009. But the price of almost everything else has.

TYRONE TURNER/WAMU

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. And that rate hasn’t changed in 10 years, even though the price of everything from housing to transportation has increased.

But new reporting shows that wages around the country have grown, in part due to state and local measures which increase the minimum wage.

In Washington D.C., paying a living wage means a rate of $14.50 an hour. But even then, some workers say it’s not enough to make ends meet.

WAMU’s Sasha-Ann Simons spoke to Ed Lazere, the executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. He told her that in D.C., “the minimum wage is a floor, and the living wage should be something that is much closer to what it really takes to live on,” and added, “we’re going to be at the weird point in a year where the living wage is actually the minimum wage, and that’s clearly a bad place to be.”

Is it enough? Are businesses or the government responsible for ensuring everyone makes a salary on which they can live?

In partnership with our home station’s Affordability Desk, this is the beginning of our series on the cost of living around the country.

We’re calling the series “Priced Out,” and throughout, we want to hear from you. What do you need to make every month to live in the U.S. and have your basic needs met? And who do you think is responsible for providing a living wage?

Produced by Morgan Givens.

GUESTS

Adriana Kugler, Professor of economics and foreign policy, Georgetown University; former Chief Economist, United States Department of Labor (Obama Administration 2011 – 2013)

David Cooper, Senior economic analyst, Economic Policy Institute; deputy director, Economic Analysis and Research Network; @metaCoop

Sasha-Ann Simons, Race & Identity Reporter, WAMU 88.5; @SashaAnnSimons

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

© 2020 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.

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USA
Case for $15 minimum federal wage convincing

The New York Times Editorial

This editorial first appeared in The New York Times. 

Guest editorials don’t necessarily reflect the Denton Record-Chronicle’s opinions.

Opponents of minimum-wage laws have long argued that companies have only so much money and, if required to pay higher wages, they will employ fewer workers.

Now there is evidence that such concerns, never entirely sincere, are greatly overstated.

Over the past five years, a wave of increases in state and local minimum-wage standards has pushed the average effective minimum wage in the United States to the highest level on record. The average worker must be paid at least $11.80 an hour — more after inflation than the last peak, in the 1960s, according to an analysis by the economist Ernie Tedeschi.

And even as wages have marched upward, job growth remains strong. The unemployment rate at the end of 2019 will be lower than the previous year for the 10th straight year.

The interventions by some state and local governments, however, do not obviate the need for federal action. To the contrary. Millions of workers are being left behind because 21 states still use the federal standard, $7.25 an hour, which has not risen since 2009 — the longest period without an increase since the introduction of a federal standard in the 1930s.

Across much of America, the minimum wage is set to rise again in the next few days. In Maine and Colorado it will reach $12; in Washington, $13.50; in New York City, $15. Workers in the rest of the country also deserve a raise. The time has come to increase the federal minimum.

House Democrats passed legislation in July that would gradually increase the federal standard to $15 an hour in 2025 — likely raising the real value above the peak value in the late 1960s — and most of the Democrats running for president have endorsed the legislation. Last year, only about 430,000 people — or 0.5% of hourly workers — were paid the federal minimum. The share has fallen in recent years as state and local governments, and some employers, have stepped in. But a much larger group of workers stand to benefit, because they now earn less than the proposed minimum. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a $15 minimum hourly wage would raise the pay of at least 17 million workers.

Among the beneficiaries: people who work for tips. Federal law lets businesses pay $2.13 an hour to waiters, bartenders and others who get tips, so long as the total of tips and wages meets the federal minimum. The legislation would end that rule; the same minimum would apply to all hourly employees. Opponents of the change argue customers will curtail tipping and workers will end up with less money. But eight states, including Minnesota, Montana and Oregon, already have a universal minimum, including for tipped workers, and restaurant workers in those states make more money.

Crucially, the legislation also would require automatic adjustments in the minimum wage to keep pace with wage growth in the broader economy. The current minimum rises only when Congress is in the mood. As a result, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has eroded by nearly 40% over the past half-century. A full-time worker making the minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in almost any American city.

The simplistic view that minimum-wage laws cause unemployment commanded such a broad consensus in the 1980s that this editorial board came out against the federal minimum in 1987, calling it “an idea whose time has passed,” and citing as evidence “a virtual consensus among economists.” The old critique is still put forward regularly by the restaurant industry and other major employers of low-wage workers.

But evidence that any such effects are relatively small has been piling up for several decades. A groundbreaking study published in 1993 by the economists David Card and Alan Krueger examined a minimum-wage rise in New Jersey by comparing fast-food restaurants there and in an adjacent part of Pennsylvania. It found no impact on employment.

This prompted other economists to test the standard theory. This year, the British government asked the economist Arindrajit Dube to review the results accumulated over the last quarter-century. Mr. Dube reported the sum total of the research showed minimum-wage increases raised compensation while producing a “very muted effect” on employment.

The patchwork nature of recent minimum-wage increases — the rate rising in some jurisdictions while staying the same in adjacent areas — is offering new opportunities for research.

For most companies, the bill is relatively small, and it can be defrayed by giving less money to shareholders, or by raising prices. Opponents often argue minimum-wage increases will encourage automation, but the point is easily overstated. Companies constantly invest in technology: McDonald’s is installing self-order kiosks across the United States, not just at places with higher minimum wages. And instead of replacing workers with robots, companies may choose to invest in technology that enhances the productivity of their workforce.

More than doubling the current federal standard would be a significant change, and it is not without risk. It is possible that a national $15 standard would produce the kinds of damage critics have long predicted; the Congressional Budget Office puts the potential increase in unemployment somewhere between zero and 3.7 million people, essentially acknowledging the effects are unpredictable.

One simple corrective, proposed by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, would be to include exemptions from the $15 standard for low-wage metropolitan areas and rural areas.

But the successful increases in minimum-wage standards across a diverse range of states and cities suggest the broader risk is worth taking. The American economy is generating plenty of jobs; the problem is in the paychecks. The solution is a $15 federal minimum wage.

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USA
Pay Is Rising Fastest for Low Earners. One Reason? Minimum Wages.
Increases in minimum wages across the country may make the labor market look a bit rosier than it really is.

By Ernie Tedeschi
Jan. 3, 2020 NYT

These days, wages in the United States are doing something extraordinary: They’re growing faster at the bottom than at the top. In fact, recent growth for workers with low wages has outpaced that for high-wage workers by the widest margin in at least 20 years.

The main story here is the long economic recovery, now entering its 11th year. For much of the early phase of this recovery, wage growth for the bottom group was weaker than for others, but it began gradually accelerating in 2014 as unemployment continued to fall. This was around the same time the labor market started tapping into people some economists had all but given up on as work force participants, such as those who had been citing health reasons or disability for not having a job.

But there has been another factor at play: the rise in state and local minimum wages.

For the last decade, the federal minimum wage has been unchanged at $7.25 an hour. But over that period, dozens of states and localities have enacted their own minimum wages or raised existing ones. As a result, the effective U.S. minimum wage is closer to $12 an hour, most likely the highest in U.S. history even after adjusting for inflation.

And with two dozen states and four dozen localities set to raise their minimums further in 2020, the effective minimum wage will keep rising this year.

These state and local actions are affecting wage data, especially for workers at the bottom. To get a sense of this impact, I have used data in the Current Population Survey to look at minimum wage workers as a group and calculate the pressure their wage gains have put on aggregate wage growth over time, controlling for compositional changes in the share of minimum wage work.
Americans Are Seeing Highest Minimum Wage in History (Without Federal Help)April 24, 2019



Note that this approach doesn’t settle whether minimum-wage increases are a net benefit to Americans, since among other things wage data will by definition capture only those who stayed employed after an increase. If people were laid off because of a minimum-wage increase, their loss of wages wouldn’t factor into the average.

This analysis shows that growth in average wages has been running about 3.9 percent per year in the Current Population Survey over the past two years, a bit firmer than the pace right before the Great Recession but below the near 5 percent reached in 2000.



But increases to minimum wages at the state and local level have put 0.4 percentage points of upward pressure on this recent growth. Absent that pressure, wage growth in the Current Population Survey over the last two years would have been 3.5 percent. That’s still a fine result, but it’s a bit cooler than the unadjusted data suggest.

Wage pressure from minimum wage workers is magnified when you look at only the lowest wages. That’s because while minimum wage work makes up about 6 percent of all usual hours worked, it’s around 13 percent of hours worked by Americans in the bottom third of wages.

As the analysis has shown us, wage growth at the bottom is doing well. It has been around 4.1 percent over the last two years — above the 3.6 percent at the top end, and above the overall average of 3.9 percent.

But absent the pressure from minimum wage workers, growth at the bottom would have been closer to 3.3 percent.

It’s important to keep the effect of these minimum wage increases in perspective. The increases aren’t responsible for most of the wage growth, or for most of the acceleration in wage growth, during this recovery. Even among the bottom third, minimum wage workers have contributed around a fifth to a quarter of wage growth over the last two years.

As notable as the recent rise in state and local minimum wages has been to this effect, it has probably not been as important as the tightening labor market. In a tight labor market, firms have to compete more to hire and retain the workers they need, which among other things gives those workers more bargaining power to bid up their wages.

The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, has argued that reaching workers traditionally “left behind” is one of the most compelling reasons to sustain the expansion for as long as possible.

Still, this analysis suggests these minimum-wage increases are having a meaningful impact on wages, at least for the employed workers who benefit from them. For the bottom third, state and local minimum wage increases have probably been the difference between the wage growth just before the economic crisis and the wage growth that is now above that pace.

But that benefit also brings with it a cautionary note for policymakers.

Economists look to wages as one thermometer of how hot the economy is getting: Accelerating wages may eventually spill over into higher prices and signal an economy at capacity, though this hasn’t happened yet in this recovery.

But these continuing increases to state and local minimum wages — and any possible future action at the federal level — could skew wage data, making the American labor market look tighter than it actually is.

The recent rise in minimum wages, although not producing a giant effect, still might suggest overall wage growth is progressing about a year further along than the reality. For low-wage workers, whom policymakers are citing more often, the minimum wage effect can be worth closer to two years’ worth of wage acceleration.

The risk of misdiagnosing an overheating economy is one reason it’s important to be clear and precise about what role minimum wage increases have played in recent wage growth: They have been important, but they’re most likely not the biggest factor.

Methodology: This analysis defines “minimum wage pressure” as the growth in the effective minimum wage — the average binding federal, state or local minimum wage received per hour of minimum wage work — over 12 months, weighted by the share of minimum wage work at the beginning of the 12-month period. In a shift-share framework, this is the equivalent of the compositionally adjusted contribution to aggregate wage growth from minimum wage workers.

The analysis uses average hourly wages for private nonfarm wage and salary workers calculated from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group. It takes hourly wages as given when available for hourly workers; for others, it divides usual weekly earnings by usual weekly hours. The analysis imputes usual hours when unavailable or varying, and adjusts weekly earnings for top-coding using a log-linear distributional assumption. It also trims outlier hourly wages. Despite these adjustments, wages in the C.P.S. invariably differ from average hourly earnings reported in the Current Employment Statistics, another Bureau of Labor Statistics data source for wages, because of differences in scope, design and concept.

The analysis uses the same methodology for calculating state and local minimum wages, and for identifying minimum wage workers, as in a previous analysis from April 2019.

Ernie Tedeschi is an economist and head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI. He worked previously at the U.S. Treasury Department. The analysis here is solely his own. You can follow him on Twitter at @ernietedeschi.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 2020, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wages Rise At Low End, Gilding Data.

THE ABOVE ARTICLE INCLUDES CHARTS NOT AVAILABLE HERE 

Americans Are Seeing Highest Minimum Wage in History (Without Federal Help)

Because of moves by states and cities in recent years, the effective average is almost at $12 an hour.


By Ernie Tedeschi
April 24, 2019



ImageProtestors called for higher wages near a Las Vegas McDonald’s in 2016. Nevada’s minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour for employees with health benefits and $8.25 for those without.Credit...John Locher/Associated Press


The federal minimum wage rose to $7.25 an hour 10 years ago. It hasn’t budged since.

For Americans living in the 21 states where the federal minimum wage is binding, inflation means that the minimum wage has lost 16 percent of its purchasing power.

But elsewhere, many workers and employers are experiencing a minimum wage well above 2009 levels. That’s because state capitols and, to an unprecedented degree, city halls have become far more active in setting their own minimum wages.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have state-level minimum hourly wages higher than the federal one. In Washington State and Massachusetts, for example, it’s $12.

But the true sea change is in the surge of city and county governments setting minimums. New York City has a $15 minimum wage, while in SeaTac, Wash., it’s $16.09.



Averaging across all of these federal, state and local minimum wage laws, the effective minimum wage in the United States — the average minimum wage binding each hour of minimum wage work — will be $11.80 an hour in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, this is probably the highest minimum wage in American history.



Growth in the Effective Minimum Has Taken Off in Recent Years

The effective minimum wage has not only outpaced inflation in recent years, but it has also grown faster than typical wages. We can see this from the Kaitz index, which compares the minimum wage with median overall wages.

To put the growth in perspective: It took the 19 years ending in 2013 for the Kaitz index to rise four percentage points. In the six years since 2013, it has risen 13 percentage points.



The Federal Minimum Affects Only a Small Share of Minimum Wage Workers

Minimum wage laws above the federal level used to be the exception. In 1998, there were about a million minimum-wage workers in states with a minimum higher than the federal level, and virtually none in localities with separate minimums. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers lived in areas where the federal minimum applied.



But today 89 percent of the nation’s 6.8 million minimum-wage employees face a minimum that is higher than $7.25 an hour. Even five years ago, relatively few such workers lived in areas with separate local minimum wages.

One consequence is increasing regional variation. American minimum wages now range from New York State’s effective $13.73, which is 62 percent of the state’s median overall wage, down to New Hampshire’s $7.25 federal peg, which is just 30 percent of the state median.



Higher Minimum Wages Have Boosted Wage Growth at the Bottom …

The most important question, though, is how the extraordinary rise in the effective minimum wage has affected American workers.

First, the good news: The average wage in the bottom third of the wage distribution — minimum-wage workers and others — has risen an average of 2.3 percent annually over the last three years after adjusting for inflation. The growth pressure from the wages of workers at or just around the minimum wage can account for between a quarter to a third of this growth.

Clearly state and local minimum-wage increases make a difference for workers who live and can find jobs in the places affected by them, even if this is not a complete explanation for the recent wage growth at the bottom nationally.



… But Like All Public Policies, Minimum Wage Increases Have Trade-Offs

Traditional textbook economics tells us that employers will cut jobs or hours for low-wage work if they’re required to set the price of labor above the level consistent with market supply and demand. Therein lies one of the most contentious debates in economics right now.

In the real world, it’s difficult to test this because of so many confounding factors.

For example, teenage employment rose about as much between 2013 and 2018 in states whose effective minimum wage didn’t change as it did in states where it rose an average of 4 percent or greater each year.

The places that chose to raise their minimum wages may be different in important respects, both socioeconomic and demographic, from those that did not, like education; industry and occupation; and labor market health.

A sizable body of empirical research that adjusts for these issues concludes that while some workers are winners from minimum wage increases, many others lose out, particularly vulnerable workers like the young and those with less education. This calls into question whether raising the minimum wage is really the best way to help workers.

But beginning with David Card and Alan Krueger’s landmark 1994 study of New Jersey’s minimum wage increase, a growing economics literature is reaching a different conclusion: that the jobs effects found in these other studies is overstated, and that the rising minimum wages in the United States have had more of a net benefit.

For example, a huge study released this month analyzed 138 different state-level minimum wage increases since 1979. The authors found largely no net negative employment effects, though they did find some in sectors exposed to international trade. And University of Washington economists revised an initial study of Seattle’s recent minimum wage increase that had showed significant negative effects on earnings for some workers. The new study found that the downsides were more muted.

Economists have several ideas for why negative jobs effects might be lower than expected. Employers may be less sensitive to minimum-wage increases because of long-term declines in national business competition and labor bargaining power, and the rise in profit rates and monopsony (in which a single buyer dominates a market).

The tightness of today’s labor market may also help explain why it’s hard to see much effect from recent increases. Perhaps minimum wages really “bite” only when they exceed a certain level. Or maybe employers have been reacting to them in ways not easily captured by wage data, such as by cutting benefits.

The push for higher state and local minimum wages shows no sign of abating, so no doubt we’ll learn even more in coming years about their trade-offs, or lack thereof.

Methodology: The effective minimum wage is the binding federal, state or local minimum wage weighted by the usual labor hours of minimum wage workers at nonfarm wage and salary jobs paid hourly. It includes all federal and state laws as well as 32 localities with separate ordinances whose geography we can identify in the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group. We exclude tipped occupations from this calculation using the definitions used by the Economic Policy Institute. We calculate median overall wages and average hourly earnings in the C.P.S. to be conceptually similar to average hourly earnings in the Current Employment Statistics survey. Inflation-adjusted series use the chained C.P.I.-U deflator, which is extended before 2000 using the deflator for personal consumption expenditures. This analysis uses data on local minimum wage ordinances from the U.C. Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education as well as from Kavya Vaghul and Ben Zipperer.

Ernie Tedeschi is an economist and head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI. He worked previously at the U.S. Treasury Department. The analysis here is solely his own. You can follow him on Twitter at @ernietedeschi.


A version of this article appears in print on April 29, 2019, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Minimum Wage at Record High (Without Federal Help). Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

How climate change has intensified the deadly fires in Australia

The unprecedented conditions that have led to the devastating wildfires in Australia stem from a typical weather pattern that has been intensified by climate change. And the fire danger is expected to get worse in the future, CBS News meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli said on "CBS This Morning" Friday.

More than 200 fires have burned roughly 12 million acres, forcing more than 100,000 residents and tourists to flee in one of the largest evacuations in Australia's history. At least 19 people have died. Navy ships helped evacuate hundreds of people from beaches along the country's southeastern coast.

With extreme heat and strong winds in the forecast, the country could see some of the worst fire weather of the season Saturday, Berardelli said.

"We're in a three-year drought in Australia," Berardelli said, adding that 2019 has been the hottest and driest year on record.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Australia hit 107 degrees for the average temperature, breaking a past record by 3 degrees. "As a meteorologist, that is remarkable, almost seems like it's not possible, but it happened," Berardelli said.

The drought is due in part to a typical weather pattern called the Indian Ocean Dipole.

"It's kind of like El Nino and La Nina. It goes back and forth over the course of years," Berardelli said. CBS NEWS

But this year, there has been a record Indian Ocean Dipole with warm water in the western part of the Indian Ocean and cooler-than-normal water in the eastern part, Berardelli said.

"So we end up with rising air over the western part of the ocean right near Africa. That causes rain. But sinking air, dry air in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean — that causes Indonesia and Australia to dry out," he said.

That extreme pattern has been made worse by warming temperatures, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The number of extreme heat days in Australia has increased from nearly zero in 1910 and 1920 to an average of about 15 per year now, and the average temperature of the country has increased by 3 degrees Fahrenheit over 100 years, Berardelli said. CBS NEWS

That increased heat dries out the soil and bush, increasing the fire danger, which has soared over the past 40 years, especially in the southeast portion of Australia.

"So this is a situation where climate change is kind of the background," Berardelli said. "When you have a natural pattern that's causing extreme fire danger, climate change spikes it, it enhances it, it turns extreme fire danger into catastrophic fire danger."

Berardelli added that the fire risk is expected to get worse in places like Australia.

"Places that get a lot of rain will get more rain, places that are dry like Australia will continue to get drier and drier. It will get worse there," he said. "In the United States, in places like California, not every year is a bad fire year, but when it's dry for a couple of years in a row, it will progressively get worse, and this will become kind of a new norm, but only worse."
© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FAA checking potentially "catastrophic" issue with 737 Max wiring



BY KRIS VAN CLEAVE

JANUARY 6, 2020 / 11:39 AM / CBS NEWS

The Federal Aviation Administration is looking at a potentially "catastrophic" issue with wiring that helps control the tail of the 737 Max, CBS News has confirmed. The safety review was first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Boeing officials.


It grew out of an FAA request to Boeing for an internal audit to confirm the company had accurately assessed the dangers of key systems in light of new assumptions about pilot response times to emergency situations.

Boeing is reviewing whether two bundles of "critical wiring" are too close together and could cause a short circuit.


If a short goes unnoticed by pilots who then do nothing to respond to the situation, it could put the plane in a catastrophic nose dive. But multiple sources tell CBS News Transportation Correspondent Kris Van Cleave that is a hypothetical at best, since Boeing hasn't determined whether that scenario could actually occur in flight.

If necessary, Boeing would have to separate or better insulate those bundles on the roughly 800 737 Max aircraft it has built. A Boeing official tells Van Cleave that the work, if needed, could be done during the process of returning the grounded planes to flight. A fix would take an hour or two per plane, according to sources.

Boeing hasn't determined whether it needs to look at the approximately 6,800 737NGs (previous generation 737s) currently in service, as well.


Boeing informed the FAA of the issue in December and possible wiring changes were discussed in an internal conference call last week.

From Boeing's standpoint, such an issue isn't unusual or "a major issue" and isn't unique to Boeing or the 737, but it could delay the Max's return to service.
Americans who know of 737 Max troubles say they don't want to fly on plane
FAA finds new potential risk in Boeing 737 Max planes

The engine supplier for the 737 Max, CFM International, has also alerted the FAA to a potential weakness with one of the engine's rotors that has a remote possibility of a failure. The agency may require additional engine inspections. CFM is a joint venture between General Electric and the French aerospace company Safran.

Boeing is also looking at a manufacturing issue with some engine covers that involves possible damage to a coating that insulates the engine cowlings from lighting strikes.


Meanwhile, the FAA confirms it's still reviewing the findings from a round of simulator testing by a cross section of 737 pilots from American, Southwest, United and Aeromexico airlines. They successfully landed the plane and responded to scenarios presented but about half didn't use the prescribed emergency procedures to handle the problems.


The next round of FAA flight testing is expected later this month.

Those findings could push the FAA to recommend additional simulator training but it's premature to speculate on that.

First published on January 6, 2020 / 11:39 AM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Kris Van Cleave


Kris Van Cleave is the transportation correspondent for CBS News.

Joel Sartore on saving endangered species – and ourselves

By National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore:

So, why should you care that so many of Earth's species are going to run out of time, and relatively soon?

Because what happens to them … will eventually happen to us.

A female, critically-endangered Northern 
white-cheeked gibbon with her year-old baby 
(Nomascus leucogenys) at the Gibbon 
Conservation Center. 
 JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

My Photo Ark project has made me intimately familiar with the nearly departed. In creating a photographic record of animals before they disappear, I've had a front-row seat to nearly 10,000 mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, reptiles and invertebrates, including the world's most vulnerable.

Most you've never heard of. There's the tarsier and the torpedo barb, the bonneted bat and the bearded pig, the wildcat and the woolly monkey.

Notice how many are looking us in the eye, as if they're counting on us to save them. Some actually look worried. We should be, too.

Though we forget it sometimes, we humans are animals ourselves. Yep, we're 100 percent primate, just like them, and we depend on the natural world in which we evolved.

We must have intact rainforests to produce dependable amounts of rain to grow our crops. We need healthy seas to generate much of the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe. And we need pollinating insects as well to bring us fruits and vegetables.
We need pollinating insects if we wish to eat fruits and vegetables. 
 JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The solution is simple but not easy: We must preserve and restore vast tracts of wild lands and oceans now, to stabilize the planet's life support systems.

As someone who has looked so many others in the eye, this is very personal. If we fail, which of these would we choose to lose?

The bonobo or the kakapo? The Barbary lion or the lion-tailed macaque? The four-striped lizard or the polka-dot poison frog?

Each are living works of art, honed by the ages, intelligent in their own way. Whether it's the San Francisco garter snake or the San Joaquin kit fox, each is deserving of a basic right to exist.

"Kit Kat," a San Joaquin kit fox, Vulpes macrotis mutica, 
at the Big Bear Alpine Zoo in Big Bear Lake, CA. 
This species is on the federal Endangered Species List. JOEL SARTORE

The good news is there's no need to get depressed. Indeed, we live in a Golden Age for conservation. Thanks to the web, we can let the whole world know about the biggest threats to co-existence, in real time. And where there's a need, humans love to fill it.

You must get off the bench now, though. Step up and find a problem you can solve in your town, then actually do something about it.

Perhaps you can get your friends to grow flowers for butterflies and native bees in yards, public parks and along roadways. Native plants at your office building is a fine idea as well, as is insulating your home, eating less meat, and reducing, reusing and recycling everything you buy.

A baby aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) named Tonks, 
16 days old, at the Denver Zoo. JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

All of this gives me great hope – for the Pacific hagfish, the noble crayfish and the glass catfish. The Atlantic sturgeon and the Pacific seahorse. The aye-aye and the Iberian lynx. The little spotted kiwi, and the giant armadillo.

By doing the best you can, diligently and for the rest of your life, your very existence will have improved the world.

Imagine that!


See also:
The Photo Ark: Preserving species before they disappear ("Sunday Morning," 11/15/15)


For more info:
joelsartore.com | The Photo Ark project
Follow @JoelSartore on Twitter and Facebook
"The Photo Ark Vanishing: The World's Most Vulnerable Animals" by Joel Sartore (National Geographic), in hardcover, available via Amazon



Story produced by Amy Wall.
© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Scientists Race to Document Puerto Rico’s Coastal Heritage
By Dánica Coto • Published December 2, 2019

APIn this photo combo provided by Eric Lo, shows the shoreline in Manati, on Aug. 2017, left, before hurricane Maria and on Nov. 2017, after the Hurricane Maria, in Puerto Rico. A group of U.S.-based scientists are rushing to document indigenous sites along Puerto Rico’s coastline that date back a couple thousand years before rising sea levels linked to climate…


A group of U.S.-based scientists is rushing to document indigenous sites along Puerto Rico's coast dating back a couple of thousand years before rising sea levels linked to climate change destroy a large chunk of the island's heritage that is still being discovered.

Scientists hope to use the 3D images they've taken so far to also help identify which historic sites are most vulnerable to hurricanes, erosion and other dangers before it's too late to save the island's patrimony.

"It's literally being washed away," said Falko Kuester, director of the Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, which is involved in the project. "A big part of what we're working on is to make the invisible visible and make sure it stays in our memory."

Also involved in the project are UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Para la Naturaleza, a nonprofit environmental group based in Puerto Rico.

The first site scientists targeted was a large swath along the U.S. territory's north coast that includes a ceremonial center used by the Taino Indians roughly 2,000 years ago, said Isabel Rivera Collazo, an environmental archaeologist at UCSD who is overseeing the project that began in August 2017.

Scientists discovered what appears to be a large settlement just east of the ceremonial site thanks to drones and technology including 3D images, she said. They were also able to determine the shape of the ceremonial site, she added.

Armed with that information, scientists used excavations to determine that one of six plazas previously discovered appears to have been used for ceremonial dances and the veneration of ancestors.

"The inside of the plaza was intensively trampled," Rivera said.

The Tainos populated various Caribbean islands but were eventually wiped out after the arrival of Christopher Columbus and European settlers.

"Up to today, there is still a lot we don't know about indigenous culture along our coasts," Rivera said. "It's not in our history books."

"The entire coast is blanketed with archaeological sites," she said. "We want to recover that information before it disappears."

Puerto Rico's Department of Natural Resources has said the sea level around the island is rising by more than 3 millimeters — a little over a tenth of an inch — per year. But climate change has more immediately dramatic effects as well, destroying habitats, eroding coastlines and causing more powerful storm surges when hurricanes hit.

Some scientists say that warmer temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of storms. Puerto Rico is exposed to storms every year for six months during the Atlantic hurricane season, and the scientists noted that the storm surge from Hurricane Maria washed away part of the region they're studying.

"It's literally in the eye of the storm quite regularly," Kuester said of the island.

Eric Lo, an engineer with the UCSD's cultural heritage initiative, flew to Puerto Rico in August 2017 to launch the project a month before Maria hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane. Lo was surprised at what he saw upon his return to the U.S. territory months later.

"Pieces of land where I had stood and flown the drone didn't exist anymore," he said. "They were underwater."

Scientists are now trying to determine the extent of coastal erosion in that region and the hurricane's impact on the archaeological site they are studying.

Three-dimensional models based on drone images are being used to measure distances, areas, volumes and explore fine details: "You start asking these details that historically you couldn't," Kuester said.

The engineering initiative that he oversees has helped explore other historic sites elsewhere, including an underwater cave with prehistoric fossils and a baptistery in Florence, Italy.

---30---

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PUERTO+RICO

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=EARTHQUAKES

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CLIMATE+CHANGE

Can a minimalist mindset help save the planet?

Less is more, according to a growing movement of minimalists. They say a clean space can clear the head, but could it also draw a link between personal and planetary well-being?

If everybody lived in the same way as the average German, we would need almost three planet Earths. If we lived like Americans, it would be almost five. That's according to calculations by the Global Footprint Network.

But what if people chose a different lifestyle — a less consumerist one filled with less stuff?

Read more: Our consumption choices are driving biodiversity loss

Minimalist blogger and podcaster Elisa Stangl doesn't have a couch or even a bed at home. She, her husband and their 2-year-old daughter sleep on Japanese tatami mats in their small flat in southern Germany. "We don't own a lot," she told DW.

Stangl adopted her minimalist lifestyle while still a student, for financial rather than environmental reasons. Travelling the world compounded her sense that she was better off living with less.

"I just learned that don't need anything other than the things I have in my backpack," she said. "So I figured, why should I need more when I'm at home?"

Now, Stangl says her main motivation is living mindfully. Having less stuff means she and her family can focus on what's important to them. They need less money, and therefore have more time for hobbies like hiking and exploring nature.


Stangl and her family plan to move out of their apartment and into a converted van so they can spend more time traveling

But Stangl also believes a minimalist lifestyle goes hand in hand with environmental responsibility.

"Living a mindful life doesn't only concern the individual," she said. "If you get to know how to live mindfully, then you know that you have to respect nature, because you live with nature and it gives you something, and you have to give something back."

Minimal lifestyles for personal rewards

Beyond the decluttering craze sparked by Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo, there's a growing interest in getting rid of stuff, with the idea that equates living more minimally with living more meaningfully.

Browsing the countless minimalist blogs, vlogs and podcasts, most overlook eco-impacts in favor of focusing on the personal benefits of having fewer belongings.

That's reflected in an ongoing study into minimalist lifestyles by Duke University in the US.

"Typically, people adopt minimalism in the interest of their own psychological wellbeing — to reduce stress and cultivate mental clarity, for example," the study's lead researcher Aimee Chabot told DW.

"But as their practice evolves, their motivations for pursuing minimalism often expand to include more outwardly focused sources of motivation, such as environmental or ethical concerns."

Chabot and her team have so far surveyed more than 800 people, most of them in the US.

"Only about 10% of survey respondents said that reducing their environmental impact was their primary motivation for practicing minimalism, though about 70% said they did consider environmental impacts to be one of their reasons for doing so," she said.

Unsustainable consumption

Even as an unintended consequence, living with less is certainly good for the planet.

A 2015 study found that more than 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to household consumption. That's mainly down to transport and food, but also the other products people buy which generate carbon emissions in production.

Read more: World marks earliest 'Earth Overshoot Day'

Household consumption is of course higher in wealthier countries. As economies around the world develop, consumption is growing. The more people that have money to spend, the more stuff they buy.

But it doesn't necessarily make them happy. As studies show, higher income and bigger spending power boosts well-being only up to a certain point.

And as the minimalism trend suggests, more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the materialistic societies they live in.

Happiness is low emission

In her 2014 book Happier People Healthier Planet, academic Teresa Belton argues that the factors driving human well-being actually have very little environmental impact.

"What generates and sustains well-being are all sorts of what I call 'non-material assets,'" she told DW. "Good relationships, contact with the natural world. Being creative, having a sense of belonging and community and purpose and meaning, being actively engaged in life and things like that, which don't involve any material consumption — or very little."


Spending time in natural green spaces has been found to improve health and well-being

Belton interviewed more than 100 people in the UK who had chosen to live lower-consumption lives. Unlike the Duke University researchers in the US, she found environmental concerns were the most common motivation.

Shift in mindset

"If we as individuals and societies made our priority our well-being, by focusing on the things that really do underpin well-being, rather than on profit-making and the material consumption that goes into profit making, then the world would be a very much better place in all respects," Belton said.

With their focus on conscious, value-driven lives, even minimalists who aren't primarily interested in their carbon footprint would no doubt agree. And those of us whose lives are full of clutter and consciences heavy on emissions might do well to see living with less as a relief, not a sacrifice.

Beyond the individual level, governments are yet to be convinced to focus on human rather than financial and material growth. But leveraging the link between human and planetary well-being could be key to shifting our economies away from consumption and tackling the climate crisis.

DW RECOMMENDS


World marks earliest 'Earth Overshoot Day'

By the end of Monday, humanity's allotment of natural resources for 2019 will be all used up, according to a report. Over the past 20 years, Earth Overshoot Day has moved up three months to July 29. (29.07.2019)

Can carbon trading cut EU emissions to net zero?

In an effort to cut carbon emissions, the EU established a cap-and-trade system 15 years ago. So far, it hasn’t had much impact. So how does it work, and how can it be made more effective? (03.12.2019)

Environmental psychology: How do you feel about that coffee to go?

DW's Hannah Fuchs likes to think she's pretty responsible about her environmental impact. But the guilt induced by a take-out coffee got her asking why even the most eco-conscious of us slip up. (21.02.2019)

'Lowering our personal carbon footprint is a question of credibility'

Activist Cara Augustenborg says individual action to cut greenhouse gases is essential, but it won't be enough without political engagement and system change. (06.03.2018)

'Our consumption choices are driving biodiversity loss'

Humankind is decimating plant and animal species, with alarming consequences for the planet. From the UN biodiversity conference in Egypt, Cristiana Pasca explains why preserving biodiversity is key to our survival. (28.11.2018)

WWW LINKS

Global Footprint Network

Study: Environmental Impact Assessment of Household Consumption

Study: High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being

Bangladesh: Protest over student rape — activists demand justice

Over 1,000 people gathered in Dhaka to demand justice for rape victims in Bangladesh. On Sunday night a student was raped and violently assaulted near the university campus.


More than 1,000 students and activists gathered in Bangladesh's main public university on Monday following the violent rape of a second-year student on Sunday night.

Protesters in Dhaka called for the arrest of whoever was responsible for the rape and for greater female safety in general.

"No more rape, we want justice!" protesters chanted. "We want a higher punishment," they said, linking hands as they marched through the campus of Bangladesh's main university.

Read more: Bangladesh shocked by rise in sex crimes, child rape

The student was walking home from a friend's house on Sunday night when she was grabbed from behind, gagged and taken to a place where she was attacked and raped, a forensic expert said on Monday.

She was rescued and taken to hospital at around midnight on Sunday.


Protesters on the Dhaka university campus

Kazi Sahan Haque, the police chief at Kurmitola Police Station, said authorities recorded a case filed by the victim's father and were investigating.

Rape and violence against women have been described as frequent occurrences in Bangladesh. Non-governmental human rights watchdog Ain O Salish Kendra reported that at least 1,351 women were raped in Bangladesh between January and November 2019.

At least 66 of the women were murdered after the rape, the organization said. The condition of Sunday's victim is unknown.


DW RECOMMENDS


Bangladeshi soldiers accused of raping 12-year-old Rohingya refugee girl

Bangladeshi troops have allegedly raped an underage Rohingya girl at the Cox's Bazar refugee camp. The authorities deny rape allegations, but the girl's family told DW they were being threatened by security forces. (04.10.2019)

Bangladesh shocked by rise in sex crimes, child rape

Multiple incidents of ghastly sexual violence in recent months have raised serious concerns over the safety of women and children in Bangladesh. Experts blame "a culture of impunity" for the spike in sex crimes. (10.07.2019)

Bangladesh sentences 16 to death for burning teen girl alive

Nusrat Jahan had reported the principal of a religious school for attempted rape, but was then burnt alive for not withdrawing the complaint. Her death sparked public outrage and mass demonstrations. (24.10.2019)