Bus ridership and the minimum wage: Evidence from bus stops near fast-food restaurants

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of Minneapolis’ local minimum wage ordinance on bus ridership. We use a difference-in-differences (DD) strategy to compare changes in ridership at bus stops in Minneapolis near fast-food restaurants to similarly situated stops around the metro area where the minimum wage was unchanged. We find that the minimum wage increase caused bus ridership to increase by 1,828 rides per day or 3.5% of post-treatment daily boardings in Minneapolis. We show that the treatment effect is highly concentrated at bus stops near fast-food restaurants. An increase in the intensive margin of labour, or weekly hours, is consistent with our results and available labour market indicators.

KEYWORDS:

• Public transit
• bus ridership
• minimum wage
• fast-food

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J38
• R41
• L92

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).