The Impact of the Minimum Wage Increase on Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence from Japan

This study examines the association between subjective wellbeing and minimum wage using the Japan Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC). JPSC investigates Japanese young and middle-aged women with a relatively high proportion of low-paid, non-regular workers. Based on fixed-effects models, the estimated results revealed no significant effect of minimum wage when using the continuous variable of life satisfaction as the dependent variable. However, we found a significant positive association between the minimum wage and life satisfaction when a dummy variable indicating whether the respondent had a high life satisfaction was used as the independent variable. This positive association was robust against estimation methods and the change of the definition of the treatment group that was affected by the minimum wage and the control group that was not affected by the minimum wage but worked at wage levels near the minimum wage. The estimated results of this study are partially consistent with previous studies examining the effect of introducing the minimum wage in Germany.