Working Paper
RISEI Lab Working Paper No. 2026-07 · 2026
Do Wage Floors Reroute Adults with Disabilities Across the Safety Net?
Download Working Paper (PDF) ↓Abstract
State minimum wages and Social Security disability-benefit receipt have risen together for four decades, a co-movement usually attributed to employment displacement of adults with disabilities. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 2018 to 2024, we examine whether the joint variation in state minimum wages and state repeal of Section 14(c) subminimum-wage authority is associated with safety-net participation, and whether the association differs for adults with long-standing disability. In the pooled population, a higher minimum wage is associated with modestly higher SSI receipt and with receipt of a larger number of benefit programs, but the share of adults whose Social Security receipt is classified as disability-based is unrelated to the minimum wage. Adults with long-standing disability do not respond differently from other adults: the difference between the two groups in how benefit receipt moves with the joint policy is near zero on every outcome, and repeal is not associated with a detectable change in benefit receipt among adults with disabilities at any minimum wage between $7.25 and $15.00.
At a glance
Key numbers
Overview
For forty years, state minimum wages and disability-benefit rolls have moved upward together. The common reading of that correlation is causal displacement: raise the wage floor, and some adults with disabilities lose work and land on Social Security. This paper tests that reading directly.
Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 2018 through 2024, the study pairs state minimum-wage variation with state repeal of Section 14(c) subminimum-wage authority, and asks whether benefit participation moves with these policies differently for adults with long-standing disability than for everyone else.
The answer is largely no. Higher minimum wages track modestly higher SSI receipt in the population as a whole, but the disability-based share of Social Security receipt is unrelated to the minimum wage, and adults with disabilities do not respond differently from other adults. Across the $7.25 to $15.00 range, repeal shows no detectable association with benefit receipt among adults with disabilities. The displacement story is not visible in the data.
Findings
What the paper finds
- No differential benefit response for adults with disabilities.The gap between adults with and without long-standing disability in how benefit receipt moves with the joint policy is near zero on every outcome examined.
- Minimum wage tracks SSI modestly, but not the disability share.A higher minimum wage is associated with slightly higher SSI receipt and more programs received overall, yet the disability-classified share of Social Security receipt does not move with the wage.
- Section 14(c) repeal shows no detectable benefit effect.Repeal is not associated with a measurable change in benefit receipt among adults with disabilities anywhere between $7.25 and $15.00.
- Re-reads a four-decade correlation.The results caution against interpreting the long-run co-movement of minimum wages and disability rolls as evidence of displacement onto benefits.
Cite this paper
Yin, M., Hadah, H., & Molina, C. (2026). Do Wage Floors Reroute Adults with Disabilities Across the Safety Net? RISEI Lab Working Paper No. 2026-07. Northwestern University.
Funding & disclosure
Data are drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation (2018–2024) and a compiled state minimum-wage and Section 14(c) policy panel. Views expressed are those of the authors.