Category: Report

Immigrant Small Business Ownership is a Cornerstone of New Jersey’s Economy

Posted on by Erika J Nava

To read a PDF version of this report, click here. 

On any given day and in every corner of the state, immigrants – both documented and undocumented – wake up and set out to work at small, local businesses that they themselves own and operate. This follows a nationwide trend, as immigrants are almost twice as likely to start new businesses than their native-born peers. And while immigrants are more likely to open any kind of business — including large corporations like Tesla, Google, and Pfizer — they are much more likely to own a “Main Street” business than native-born residents.[1] These small businesses, like grocery stores, hair salons and restaurants, generate approximately $1 billion in economic activity every year and are critical to downtowns and local economies across New Jersey with its 565 unique municipalities.

Immigrants own a higher share of Main Street businesses in New Jersey than in any other state not named California.[2] In fact, immigrants account for 47 percent of the Garden State’s Main Street business owners despite making up just 22 percent of the total population.[3] Given the state’s many small towns and its diversity of immigrants — New Jersey has the third highest share of immigrants and arguably the most ethnically diverse immigrant population and workforce in the nation — this is perhaps not surprising, but it is nonetheless important to the state’s economy.

Proactive immigration policies are inextricably linked to the success of immigrant-owned businesses, yet decisions on these issues are often made without input from immigrant business communities. For example, a proposal to expand access to driver’s licenses to all residents, regardless of immigration status, will allow customers of immigrant-owned businesses to have more purchasing power. This policy would also allow employees of immigrant-owned businesses to leave work on their own terms — not just when the last bus or train departs — and become more financially secure and independent.[4]

New Jersey’s Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Diverse and Own a Variety of Businesses

New Jersey’s immigrant population has doubled since 1990, and the shares of immigrants in the labor force and immigrant business owners have grown along with it. In 2016, immigrants made up 31 percent of New Jersey’s business owners and 28 percent of the labor force, up from 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in 1990.

The immigrant share of Main Street business owners has also grown tremendously, doubling over the same time — to 47 percent in 2016 from 24 percent in 1990.

And while a majority (53 percent) of New Jersey’s Main Street businesses are owned by individuals born in the US, 8 out of 10 dry cleaners and 7 out of 10 grocery stores and bodegas are owned by immigrants. Further, immigrant entrepreneurs own 50 percent or more of the state’s household maintenance businesses, transportation services, nail salons, computer service centers, restaurants, and clothing stores.[5]

New Jersey’s immigrant entrepreneurs are diverse in the types of businesses they own and in regard to their race and ethnicity. A majority (54 percent) of Main Street immigrant business owners are Asian, while fifteen percent are Hispanic.[6] Asian and Hispanic immigrants are much more likely than their US-born peers to own Main Street businesses. However, Black immigrants only account for two percent of immigrant owned Main Street businesses.

What Makes Immigrants More Likely to be Business Owners

Mounting evidence suggests that immigrants are more likely to start and own small businesses because they face discrimination in the job market due to limited English proficiency and, sometimes, their citizenship status.[7] In addition, immigrants who earned advanced degrees in their home country have trouble continuing their careers in the US as foreign qualifications and academic achievements may not be recognized.

Ray Lamboy, Executive Director of the Latin American Economic Development Association (LAEDA), a nonprofit dedicated to helping immigrants and ethnic minorities start their own businesses, reinforces these findings:

“First generation immigrants do not typically have the access or the time to develop strong networks of support in the business community. This makes it difficult for immigrants to acquire full-time, professional positions in the workforce. Within immigrant communities, connections and networks are more easily established, making it easier for immigrants to find support in starting their own business.

“An example of a strong immigrant entrepreneur network can be found in South Jersey, where a large share of small businesses are owned by immigrants from the Puebla region of Mexico. These immigrants own a majority of the Latino owned businesses in Camden and the Vineland–Millville–Bridgeton metro-region. A majority of these businesses are supported with resources from other immigrant entrepreneurs from the same part of Mexico.”[8]

Immigrant-owned businesses are often a source of first jobs for other immigrants in the community for two reasons: the stepladder experience and block mobility.[9]

The stepladder experience is the idea that immigrant businesses function as a training platform for other immigrants to gain knowledge on how business is done in the United States, obtain work experience, and build social capital.[10] Some immigrants start their business in the informal market (businesses that are not incorporated or legally recognized) and then incorporate it once they gain experience, capital, and knowledge of the market and regulatory landscape. For instance, Felix Sanchez of Passaic, New Jersey started his businesses selling tortillas in the informal market, going door-to-door. As his community’s Latino population grew, so did his business, in spite of him not speaking English and dropping out of school after sixth grade. His company, Puebla Foods, is now a multi-million-dollar business.[11]

Block mobility explains that immigrants seek to be business owners resulting from the disadvantages and discriminations they often suffer in the labor market due to a lack of English proficiency and trouble transferring their foreign-earned degrees.

Economic Impact and Disparities in Earnings Between Native-Born and Immigrant Small Business Owners

Owning a Main Street business comes with increased social capital, as these establishments are an important part of the fabric of their respective local communities. However, owning a Main Street business does not guarantee a higher salary.

The average annual earnings for an immigrant Main Street business owner in New Jersey are $45,117. This is less than the average earnings for their US-born counterparts, who make $53,998 per year. When counting all businesses, the average annual earnings for an immigrant entrepreneur are $55,998. For US-born businesses owners, the average annual earnings are $75,062. For context, the average New Jersey immigrant earns $45,037 per year while US-born New Jerseyans earn an average salary of $58,000.[12]

Nevertheless, New Jersey’s immigrant business owners are a critical part of the state’s economy. In total, New Jersey’s immigrant-owned businesses earn $4.4 billion dollars per year, including $950 million per year from Main Street businesses.[13] These earnings inject money into local economies, employ thousands of New Jersey workers, and in some cases, act as a lifeline for neighborhoods that have experienced decades of disinvestment and population decline.

Education and Gender Disparities

Higher-education is strongly correlated with owning a business. This is true for both immigrants and US-born business owners. Half of immigrant business owners — 50 percent — have either completed college or have an advanced degree. US-born business owners mirror these levels of education, as 53 percent have completed college or have an advanced degree.

Education, however, is not as strong a predictor of immigrant business ownership as it is for US-born entrepreneurs. Almost a third of immigrant business owners — 32 percent — have a high school degree or less. This is eight percentage points higher than US-born business owners, as only 24 percent have a high degree or less. This exemplifies the impact of the stepladder effect, which explains how many immigrants gain the necessary experience within the immigrant business sector to open their own business.

In regard to the gender breakdown of business ownership, men own a greater share of businesses than women. Men own 74 percent of total businesses and 67 percent of Main Street businesses. Immigrant women are slightly more likely to own a business than US-born women.

Immigrant Owned Small Businesses Are a Critical Part of New Jersey’s Economy

Small businesses are the backbone of local economies and communities across the state.[14] Small businesses, specifically those on Main Street, help neighborhoods stay economically active and, in some cases, revitalize cities experiencing population decline. Small businesses also help increase the local tax base and stimulate consumer spending in local economies.[15]

New Jerseyans born outside of the US are an asset not only to the state’s culture but also to its broader economy. Policymakers and the public alike should recognize the contributions of immigrants and the vital role they play on Main Streets in every corner of the state. It is in everyone’s best interest to have proactive policies that allow immigrants to prosper and feel safe and secure here in the Garden State. When immigrants do better, we all do better.

 

Endnotes

[1] Dyssegaard K.David, Bringing Vitality to Main Street: How Immigrant Small Businesses Help Local Economies Grow. Fiscal Policy Institute. 2015.

[2] Main Street businesses are defined by this report as small businesses focused on neighborhood services, accommodation and food services, and retail. This definition is consistent with that used by David K. Dyssegaard, cited above.

[3] NJPP analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) 2016, Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), 5-Year. Data obtained from Fiscal Policy Institute.

[4] Amuedo-Dorantes, C., Arenas-Arroyo, E., & Sevilla, A. (2018). Labor Market Impacts of States Issuing of Driving Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants (No. 12049). Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). http://ftp.iza.org/dp12049.pdf.

[5] Private Households subsector include private households that engage in employing workers on or about the premises in activities primarily concerned with the operation of the household. These private households may employ individuals, such as cooks, maids, butlers, and outside workers, such as gardeners, caretakers, and other maintenance workers. Source: https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag814.html

[6] Ibid 3.

[7] Zhou, M. (2004). Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergences, Controversies, and Conceptual Advancements. The International Migration Review,38(3), 1040-1074. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645425

[8] NJPP interview conducted with Ray Lamboy, Executive Director of Latin American Economic Development Association, January 2019. http://www.laeda.com/

[9] Ibid 1.

[10] Ibid 7.

[11] Semple, Kirk. Moving to U.S. and Amassing a Fortune, No English Needed. New York Times. 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/nyregion/immigrant-entrepreneurs-succeed-without-english.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

[12] Ibid 3.

[13] Ibid 3.

[14] Nava, Erika (2017). New Jersey Immigrants are a Huge Economic Driver. https://www.njpp.org/blog/new-jerseys-immigrants-are-a-huge-economic-driver

[15] Ibid 1.

In Brief: New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act at 10 Years

Posted on by Mark Weber

In this report, Dr. Bruce D. Baker of Rutgers University analyzes the impact of New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) over the last decade and recommends policies that would strengthen the law and improve the state’s school funding system.

To read a PDF version of the full report click here.

To read a PDF version of the report summary, click here.

New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008 was never a perfect law; in many ways, however, it remains a model state school finance policy:

  • SFRA directs more funding toward the students who need it the most. Under SFRA, New Jersey distributes state aid more progressively across local public school districts with respect to students’ needs.
  • SFRA directs more funding toward the school districts that can’t raise enough revenue locally. Because of SFRA, New Jersey distributes state aid progressively with respect to local income and property wealth, which serve as measures of local capacity to adequately fund schools.

Unfortunately, SFRA has been undermined by several factors through the years during and following the economic recession of 2008, including:

  • Cuts and freezes to state aid. These cuts have led to larger and large shares of children attending districts falling well short of their adequacy budget targets.
  • Failure to enforce a minimum local fair share. The failure to make sure each district raises its “fair share” of school funding through local taxes leaves some districts with even larger gaps between current spending and adequacy targets.
  • Local property tax increase caps. These caps prohibit districts that are levying less than their required local effort – and spending less than adequacy targets – from raising their local property taxes so as to adequately fund their schools.

Figure 1: Total Student Enrollment by School District Adequacy (2008-2018)

Figure 1 shows the numbers of children attending districts that are below adequacy and more than $5,000 per pupil below adequacy.[1] About 800,000 children attend districts below adequacy and nearly 200,000 children attend districts with adequacy gaps greater than $5,000 per pupil. These gaps alone require a minimum of $1 billion to close.

Rise and Fall of Progressive School Funding in New Jersey

New Jersey reached its highest school funding effort level around 2009 with respect to GDP/State and 2006 with respect to personal income. Since that time, effort has declined, including a sharp decline from 2010 to 2012. Current effort levels are back to early 2000s levels, about halfway between their peak and pre-1998 levels. In 2015, New Jersey ranked 5th in the share of aggregate personal income spent on elementary and secondary education.

Figure 2: NJ School Funding Effort Levels (1996-2016)

How School Funding Affects Student Achievement

Figure 3: Average PARCC Scores by SFRA Adequacy Group (2015-2017)

Figure 3 summarizes average PARCC scores for the past three years, showing lower average scores in schools in districts with larger adequacy gaps. Admittedly, this relationship is, to an extent, circular: districts serving higher-need populations tend to have lower scores, and also tend to have larger adequacy gaps. But therein lies the point. The goal of a progressive school finance formula is to leverage additional resources in order to assist in closing the funding gaps – and therefore, the outcome gaps between high-need and low-need districts. National data shows SFRA has helped to shrink these gaps – but state data shows New Jersey’s school funding system is still falling short of what is needed to equalize educational opportunity.

School Funding: New Jersey vs. the Nation

The evidence is clear: school funding matters. The maps below show how spending and outcomes are related in the lowest-poverty and highest-poverty districts.

The map in Figure 4 is based on a statistical model, using national data, that calculates how much the lowest-poverty districts (bottom 20 percent in poverty) actually spend compared to how much they would need to spend to achieve average national test outcomes. Darker green indicates more spending. The map in Figure 5 shows test score outcomes; darker blue indicates higher outcomes.

New Jersey’s most affluent districts make large investments in their schools compared to similar districts in other states. As a consequence, New Jersey’s lowest-poverty districts have some of the highest test score outcomes in the nation. New Jersey’s wealthiest districts spend more on their schools and get exceptional outcomes in return.

Figure 4: Spending Gaps for Lowest Poverty School Districts

Figure 5: Test Score Outcomes for Lowest Poverty School Districts

What about the New Jersey districts with the highest levels of poverty (top 20 percent)? As the map in Figure 6 shows, these high-poverty districts still don’t spend enough to match the districts with the lowest levels of poverty (darker red indicates lessspending than what is needed to attain average test outcomes). Nonetheless, as the map in Figure 7 shows, these least affluent districts still come close to matching national average educational outcomes (as indicated by the tan color, which signifies average outcomes).

Figure 6: Spending Gaps for Highest Poverty School Districts

Figure 7: Test Score Outcomes for Highest Poverty School Districts

Overall, New Jersey is in a good position with respect to the rest of the nation: the state is able to shoot for much higher than prior year national average outcomes. But a sustained commitment to adequate and equitable funding is necessary for the state to provide allof its students with equal educational opportunity.

Solutions to Improve SFRA

Short Term:

  1. Fully funding the SFRA formula to meet its adequacy targets.
  2. Requiring districts to fully fund their local fair share if they fall below adequacy targets.
  3. Using a competitive wage growth index instead of a consumer price index. New Jersey can only maintain a high-quality teacher workforce if it offers competitive wages. Keeping those wages competitive requires tying them to the wage increases of other college-educated professionals.

Medium Term:

  1. Replacing the current Geographic Cost Adjustment (GCA) factor (which is applied at the county level) with a similarly determined adjustment (Taylor’s ECWI) applied at the labor market level, to remove distortions along county lines within the same labor market.
  2. Returning special education funding to a system based on tiers of student need, with appropriately differentiated funding based on actual distributions of children with disabilities. This change should be combined with providing 100% of special education funding through the equalization formula.

Long Term:

  1. Recalibrating funding targets and cost adjustments tied to current outcome goals. Using current data and applying more rigorous cost analysis methods, New Jersey should reexamine the levels of resources needed for schools and districts to efficiently achieve its current educational goals.
  2. Reconsidering the role of charter schools and how they affect public school funding. The state should direct funding to charter schools based on costs and needs while simultaneously assessing their fiscal impact on the efficiency of the entiresystem of public schools.
  3. Integrating pre-K funding into the SFRA model.
  4. Considering a statewide, SFRA-like formula for financing the state’s community college system. This would enable the provision of free, equitable and adequate two-year public college programs for all who wish to attend.

2019 is the year to act – to create better schools and better lives for the children of New Jersey. This report provides a starting point for the Murphy administration and the Legislature to enact legislation that will lead to a better statewide school funding system and a better education for all of New Jersey’s students.

 

Endnotes

[1]As calculated in this report.

Targeted Public Investments Can Improve Health Across New Jersey

Posted on by Brandon McKoy

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

By Brandon McKoy, Sheila Reynertson, and Raymond Castro

All New Jerseyans should have the opportunity to lead a healthy life, no matter where they live or how much money they make. State policymakers can foster this opportunity for all Garden State residents by unleashing targeted public investments and making smart budget and tax policy decisions. Lawmakers — as well as health care leaders — need to look beyond traditional investments in health care services and access (think insurance, hospitals, and the like), and consider how the state’s investments in education, housing, and other socioeconomic and environmental factors can eliminate the barriers to a healthy life for New Jerseyans.

While access to health care does play an important role in influencing health outcomes, the conditions and circumstances in which people live, work, learn, and play are very influential in shaping how healthy they feel and how long they live. One widely recognized and validated model, from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, suggests that 80 percent of health outcomes are determined by social and economic, environmental, and behavioral factors; just 20 percent are attributable to health care.[1] Social, economic, and environmental factors are largely shaped by state and federal policy and budget decisions.

Low-Income New Jerseyans Face Unique Barriers to Healthy Living

Healthy people and communities are the building blocks of a strong and thriving New Jersey. Since state policymakers expanded Medicaid in 2013, New Jersey’s uninsured rate rapidly dropped to 8 percent in 2017 from 13.2 percent in 2013. However, a number of barriers prevent many Garden State communities from experiencing good health, including economic instability and hardship; limited access to healthy, affordable food; lack of affordable housing; and exercise options in safe, walkable neighborhoods.

In short, opportunities for Americans to be healthy are not distributed equally. As documented by many studies, there is a direct relationship between income and health with low-income Americans having poorer self-reported health status across all racial and ethnic groups.[2]Meanwhile, a history of structural racism and inequality have helped create especially poor health outcomes for Americans of color, who are more likely to report their health as fair or poor than their White peers. And low-income people of color have the poorest self-reported health status of all, with more than 1 in 5 low-income Black and Latinx people reporting fair or poor health (among racial groups where data are available: Black, Latinx, and White).[3]

In New Jersey, these health inequities can be viewed geographically and demographically, though it’s worth noting that due to historically racist policies in housing and other areas, residential segregation has created a situation with many demographically homogenous geographies across the Garden State. This is not so evident at the county level, but much more so at the ZIP code level.

For example, the share of residents in poor or fair health is just 11 percent in New Jersey’s healthiest county (Morris) and 23 percent in the state’s least healthy county (Cumberland). The disparities across racial and ethnic lines are even more severe: just 11 percent of White and Asian New Jerseyans are in poor or fair health, compared to 20 percent and 32 percent of Black and Latinx New Jerseyans, respectively.[4]

Where one is born and resides in New Jersey can have a big impact on how long one lives. Take life expectancy in the Trenton area, for example. In the 08611 ZIP code, which includes the Chambersburg and Mill Hill neighborhoods, the average life expectancy is 73 years. As one moves north and east of Trenton, people live longer lives: In the 08619 ZIP code, that includes neighborhoods in both Trenton and Hamilton, the average life expectancy jumps 10 percent, to 80 years; and moving farther out to the 08550 ZIP code (the Princeton Junction section of West Windsor), the average life expectancy increases another 9 percent, to 87 years.[5]

This neighborhood-by-neighborhood disparity is not limited to Mercer County, of course. One finds similar results when comparing life expectancy in Camden and Cherry Hill, or in Newark and Montclair, for example.

Overall, New Jerseyans of color are less likely to achieve greater health than their White neighbors — no matter where they live. While close to 60 percent of White New Jerseyans have “good or excellent health,” according to the health equity metrics developed as part of the Health Opportunity and Equity (HOPE) Initiative, less than 45 percent of Black, and less than 35 percent of Latinx, New Jerseyans do.[6]Black New Jerseyans also have significantly lower average life expectancies, and higher rates of infant mortality, than their White or Latinx neighbors.[7]

Building Healthy Communities and Advancing Equity Through Public Policy

 New Jersey policymakers should focus on improving the health and well-being of all the state’s residents by implementing sound policies that lift people out of poverty and boost opportunity, and by leveraging the state budget to support programs beyond investments in health care. Many programs and policies that may not seem health-related on the surface can help build healthy communities and advance equity.

The good news is that New Jersey has already taken major steps in this direction; lawmakers ought to build on that foundation of progress in 2019 and beyond. Here’s how.

Make Health Care Affordable for All New Jerseyans

Polls in New Jersey have shown that health care costs were the number one issue in the midterm elections last year. This is understandable because New Jersey is often ranked among the top states in medical costs. To help address this issue, policymakers enacted a reinsurance program and reinstated the individual mandate that was repealed at the federal level, both of which have and will continue to reduce insurance costs.[8]Nevertheless, much more needs to be done. New Jersey lawmakers should:

  • Make all uninsured children eligible for NJ FamilyCare (includes Medicaid and CHIP) regardless of immigration status and income
  • Establish a commission to oversee and set caps on the excessive costs of prescription drugs
  • Raise Medicaid reimbursement rates for pediatric services that are not sufficiently accessible to low-income children

Boost the Income of Workers and Their Families

In a high-cost state like New Jersey, far too many workers and their families are not paid enough to make ends meet. This creates a wide range of barriers to better health for hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans who are unable to afford a decent, safe place to live; or who struggle to regularly put nutritious meals on the table; or who must cope with the toxic stress and uncertainty that comes with being unable to secure basic economic security.

To allow all New Jerseyans the chance to live healthy, thriving lives, policymakers must boost the income of these workers and their families on both payday and at tax time.

Raise the minimum wage

New Jersey’s minimum wage in 2019 is $8.85, a woefully inadequate rate that does not help workers meet their basic needs. But thanks to the hard work of NJPP and our allies, the Governor signed into law an increase in the wage to $15 by 2024 for most workers, after which future increases will be tied to inflation. The wage will go up to $10 on July 1, 2019, and then increase to $11 on January 1, 2020. The wage will then increase $1 on January 1st each year until reaching $15 in 2024. This increase will benefit about 1 million of the state’s workers, helping them meet their daily needs and improving our economy.[9]

Some workers are on a separate, slower phase-in schedule. Those who are employed as seasonal workers or at businesses with fewer than 6 workers will get to $15 by 2026, after which there is a provision to bring them to parity with the general wage by 2028. For farmworkers, they will get to $12.50 by 2024, after which the Commissioner of Labor and Secretary of Agriculture will determine whether they should continue to $15. If they decide in the affirmative, farm workers will reach $15 by 2027, after which they will reach parity with the general wage by 2030.

New Jersey’s tipped wage will also get a small increase to $5.13 from the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13. While this is important, the tipped differential between the tipped wage and the minimum wage will go from $6.72 in 2019 to $9.87 in 2024, a development that we have advised against. NJPP has reported on the unique challenges faced by workers who rely on tips for a majority of their pay, from increased instances of wage theft to a heightened risk of assault and sexual harassment. NJPP and labor advocates will continue to push for the complete phase out of the tipped wage.

Nevertheless, this is a hugely important change that will reverberate throughout New Jersey’s economy. As one of the slowest states to emerge from the Great Recession, and with a population where four out of ten households essentially live paycheck to paycheck and have trouble making ends meet, raising the minimum wage to $15 will be transformative for the state’s workers, families, and businesses.[10]Lawmakers should develop new legislation to phase-out the tipped wage altogether, a move that would significantly improve the economic security and work experience of tipped workers.[11]

Expand tax credits for working families

 Increasing take-home pay for low-paid workers is a critical step toward increasing economic security and the prospects for better health. It is equally critical for policymakers to ensure low-income and working-class families aren’t unduly punished by an upside-down tax code that asks them to pay greater shares of their income to state and local taxes.

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides low-paid workers with a boost to their incomes in the form of a tax refund. This credit lifts more than 5 million Americans — including 3 million children — out of poverty each year, and reduces the severity of poverty for many millions more.[12]The EITC has been shown to have tremendous widespread benefits, including improved health for infantsand mothers.

New Jersey — like 28 other states and D.C. — has a state EITC that builds on the federal credit and helps even out the tax code and increase opportunity for working families and their children.[13]Children who get additional income through programs like the EITC tend to do better and go farther in school and tend to work and earn more as adults — all of which can have a strong, positive effect on their ability to live healthier lives.

The state EITC in New Jersey is strong, thanks to a longstanding tradition of bipartisan support in the legislature and governor’s office. Last year, policymakers came together and agreed to increase the state EITC from 35 percent of the federal credit to 40 percent over three years. This will put tens of millions of more dollars each year in the pockets of over half a million New Jersey families.

Lawmakers should build on the success of this vital credit by expanding it to an important group of low-paid workers that the EITC largely ignores: adults who aren’t raising children. California, Maryland, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia have already expanded their EITCs to include these workers; hundreds of thousands of low-paid New Jersey workers could receive a much-needed boost to help make ends meet if Garden State lawmakers follow suit.[14][15]

New Jersey policymakers took another big step last year to help the state’s lower-income working families at tax time when they created a new child and dependent care tax credit (CDCTC) for 74,000 families with annual incomes of less than $60,000. It is based on the federal credit, which allows parents and caregivers to deduct up to 35 percent of employment related care expenses from their federal taxes. However, New Jersey caps the CDCTC at a low 50% of the federal credit and is nonrefundable, meaning it will offset the tax due but cannot reduce the tax below $0. Making the CDCTC fully refundable and at a more generous percentage of the federal credit would help the families that need it the most. Half of the states and D.C. currently offer these credits. In twelve states the credits are fully refundable.

Ensure All Workers Have the Ability to Balance Work and Family Needs

Expand paid family leave

 In 2008, New Jersey became the second state to adopt a paid family leave policy. Nearly a decade into the Family Leave Insurance (FLI) program, it’s a clear success, having replaced hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages for tens of thousands of New Jerseyans who needed to take time off to be with a new child or sick family member.

The existence of this program is a boon for health in New Jersey, particularly for the health of young children. A period of paid leave after the birth of a child contributes to the healthy development of infants and toddlers. There is evidence linking paid leave to better maternal and child health outcomes, like reduced infant and post-neonatal mortality rates; increased breastfeeding, well-child medical visits, and immunizations; and improved health outcomes for children in early elementary school, including reduced issues with maintaining a healthy weight, ADHD and hearing-related problems, particularly for less-advantaged children.[16]

And yet this trailblazing program is falling short of its potential, with serious repercussions for New Jersey families and for the state’s economy. The program is not widely advertised, particularly among low-paid workers. And the wage replacement level and cap on earnings are so low that many workers across the income scale simply cannot afford to take advantage of what should be an important benefit.

In January 2019, legislation to improve and expand the NJ Family Leave Insurance Program passed both houses. The reforms and additional changes in the bill will go a long way to make the program more accessible for working families, especially those struggling to balance work and family caregiving. With the bill on the Governor’s desk, New Jersey is poised to both remove the barriers that have stopped many people from taking paid family leave and increase public awareness of the program so that no one will have to choose work over the time to heal or care for a loved one in need. These improvements will be fully funded by a small increase to current worker contributions, with measurable benefits for families, employers and the state’s economy. Specifically, the new law will:

  • Allow workers to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave
  • Increase the current two-thirds wage replacement
  • Raise the very low cap on earnings while on leave
  • Expand job protections for 200,000 workers employed at companies with 30 to 50 workers
  • Expand the definition of family to include grandparents and grandkids, siblings, adult children, parents-in-law, and chosen family
  • Provide benefits for survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault and to those caring for survivors
  • Increase public awareness with designated funding for outreach

Ensure sound implementation of earned sick leave

Until last year,over 1 million New Jerseyans, mostly in low-paid jobs, couldn’t get paid if they needed to take time off because they were sick. And for many, taking an unpaid day off meant forfeiting their job. Last year state policymakers fixed that problem.

The New Jersey Earned Sick Leave Law — which went into effect on October 29, 2018 — allows employees to accrue 1 hour of earned sick leave for every 30 hours worked, for up to 40 hours each year. This new law is important for workers, particularly low-paid workers, and also for public health.

Earned sick leave has been linked to reducing preventable hospitalizations and emergency-room visits; stopping the spread of illness (particularly foodborne illness, since the restaurant industry is one where workers are least likely to have employer-sponsored access to earned sick days); and more.[17][18]People who come to work sick also get injured more often, particularly in high-risk occupations like manufacturing, construction, healthcare and agriculture.[19]

Being able to take earned sick days is also very important for working parents. When they aren’t allowed to take earned sick days, parents face the difficult decision of caring for themselves and their loved ones or showing up for work, a choice which could extend the duration and increase the severity of an illness.

We have seen evidence right here in New Jersey of how earned sick leave policies can improve health. In Jersey City, which was the first New Jersey municipality to pass an earned sick leave policy in 2014, fewer sick Jersey City employees are coming to work, reducing the risk of illness spreading around the city — an important finding that promotes both public health and a stronger economy.[20]

The New Jersey Department of Labor is now in the process of finalizing regulations which appear to be strong interpretations consistent with Earned Sick Leave Act. They establish clear guidelines for New Jersey employers about their new obligations and employees about their rights to access earned time off to recover from an illness or help a sick loved one. To ensure New Jersey workers and employers learn about the law, regulations will also provide for general outreach and education efforts in multiple languages.

Invest in the Building Blocks of Healthy, Strong Communities

Continue expanding access to high-quality preschool

Universal high-quality preschool prepares children for school and has been found to boost their test scores, high school graduation rates and employment opportunities, as well as their long-term health.

Children who participate in high-quality early childhood programs experience immediate and long-term health-related benefits.[21]They also tend to go farther in school; setting up another wave of positive outcomes, since people with more education live longer, are less likely to die from cancer or heart disease and have better access to health care and insurance.[22]

In 2008, the legislature recognized the value of expanding access to high-quality early education, passing the School Finance and Reform Act to bring preschool to more towns across the state. Still, many New Jersey’s children lack access to early education. That’s because many successive governors and legislatures have yet to deliver on the promise of the 2008 law. That has begun to change, and in last two state budgets lawmakers dedicated over $100 million in additional funding to expand state-funded, full-day preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds to more school districts.[23]As a result, the number of districts providing at least partial access to high-quality public preschool has more than tripled, from 35 just two years ago to over 100 today.[24]

New Jersey policymakers should continue to take steps to fully fund the 2008 law and expand preschool to more districts, but they also ought to think bigger and bolder and work towards implementing truly universal preschool across the entire state, in every district.

Make public transit more accessible, affordable, and reliable

Transportation is a monumental issue for New Jersey, and here more than anywhere else the conversation about transportation must be about public transit. But, despite the fact that nearly a million New Jerseyans use public transportation on a daily basis, the political and policy culture of the state remains dominated by car-centric thinking. This is an enormous problem for the most densely populated state in the nation.

As a result, public transit in New Jersey is in crisis. The infrastructure is decaying. The funding streams are dried up, and the funding structure is broken. As a result, the costs to commuters are rising. And still, the service is getting worse. Low-income residents and New Jerseyans of color are disproportionately harmed by this public transit crisis that is also making our communities less healthy.

This must change. After all, increased use of public transit has a positive effect on health. It improves local economies, helping boost working families and their long-term health. It makes the air cleaner and safer for New Jerseyans to breathe by getting more automobiles off the roads. And it leads to more physical activity too — public transit users, on average, walk more than drivers. And the connections between bicycle infrastructure and transit infrastructure show tremendous promise, helping to extend the reach of public transit and get more riders on buses and in trains, without further clogging local roads — and doing so in a way that is more affordable for less well-off residents.

But public transit’s social, economic and health benefits don’t exist if there are no riders, or not enough riders. And if the transit system is unaffordable, unreliable and unsafe due to years of disinvestment, the riders will — if they can — stay away.

New Jersey has shirked its responsibility to invest the dollars necessary to create a reliable, affordable, modern public transit system. In 2016, policymakers took a big step toward fixing this problem by raising fuel taxes to help pay for capital investments in transit modernization and for expansion across the state. That will help, but it will not fix New Jersey’s long-standing underfunding of NJ Transitoperatingcosts.

Lawmakers must find adequate, stable and dedicated funding for NJ Transit’s operations. From 2005 to 2017, the state slashed direct support of NJ Transit by 59 percent. This meant NJ Transit increasingly turned to riders to make up the difference. Major fare hikes raised rider contributions by 45 percent over the same time.[25]

Riders pick up far more of the tab for NJ Transit (52 percent) than they do for most peer transit agencies around the country. In Chicago, for example, riders pay for 38 percent of operations and in Los Angeles, just 22 percent. This is a direct result of how little of NJ Transit’s operating budget is covered by dedicated taxes — just 1.3 percent, compared to 51 percent in Chicago and 58 percent in Los Angeles.

Dedicated, stable annual revenues are necessary to support NJ Transit’s operating budget. Lawmakers should consider a variety of options, including congestion pricing, a surcharge on gas-guzzling automobile purchases and taxing businesses that disproportionately benefit from transit (as New York’s Metropolitan Transit Agency does). Ensuring stable and adequate support for operating expenses will prevent NJ Transit from imposing even more fare hikes or capital funding raids.

Reverse disinvestment in higher education

People who attend and graduate from college have a greater shot at economic success — and at living healthier lives. Now more than ever, Americans with less education are dying earlier than their peers; more likely to have major diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes; more likely to have risk factors that predict disease, such as smoking and obesity; and more likely to have diminished physical abilities for health reasons or to be disabled.[26]

New Jersey policymakers concerned with improving health outcomes for all residents shouldn’t overlook the role of affordable public higher education — and should work to reverse the recent trend of sustained disinvestment in New Jersey’s public colleges and universities.

At a time when more students than ever are seeking to secure their families’ future with a college education, New Jersey has slashed funding for its institutions of higher learning and shifted the cost burden onto the shoulders of striving students and their families. Between 2008 and 2018, New Jersey’s funding for public four-year colleges and universities dropped 24 percent, representing a $2,387 cut per-student. Over that same period, average tuition costs at public four-year colleges and universities increased 18 percent, or $2,075, from $11,973 in 2008 to $13,868 in 2018.

This results in an increasingly heavy burden for New Jersey families. In 2017, average tuition and fees at a public four-year institution accounted for 17 percent of a New Jersey family’s median income. For families of color — who often face additional barriers to employment and increased difficulty accessing jobs that pay better — the situation was far more severe, with those costs accounting for 27 percent of a Black New Jersey family’s median income and 25 percent of a Latinx family’s median income.[27]

To slow the increase in unaffordable college prices and rising student debt, New Jersey should at the very least return to pre-recession levels of funding for higher education.

Raise adequate revenues in an equitable way

Creating opportunities for all New Jerseyans to lead healthier lives requires investments beyond traditional health care spending. It is essential to apply a health lens to the way the state raises and spends money, because health starts with where we live, learn, work, and play. Great schools, safe and vibrant communities, quality jobs, and programs that lift and keep people out of poverty strengthen our economy while creating opportunities for healthier New Jerseyans in every corner of the state. To support these foundations of thriving communities, our state needs dependable revenues that are equitable, sustainable, and adequate.

The good news is that New Jersey’s fiscal year 2019 budget, the first of Governor Murphy’s administration, signaled a much-needed reversal after nearly a decade of austere fiscal policy.[28]After years of neglect, assets critical to New Jersey’s economic success, like K-12 schools, public transit, and county colleges all received modest increases in state funding. However, the most recent budget falls short in one key area that has plagued the state and its finances for three decades: there are simply not enough stable, long-term sources of new revenue to sustain these increased investments.

Policymakers should build on the steps taken in the FY 2019 budget by implementing adequate revenue streams. Doing so will help unleash important public investments that can boost opportunity and the long-term health of New Jersey’s current and future generations.

Policymakers should:

  • Continue to make the state income tax more based on the ability to pay, by levying higher marginal rates on income over $1 million
  • Restore adequate taxation of inherited wealth
  • Reform and minimize corporate tax breaks for economic development
  • Modernize the sales tax and return the base rate to 7 percent
  • Strengthen the state’s newly implemented combined reporting law
  • Make the corporate tax surcharge permanent

Author’s Note: Support for this report was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

 

Endnotes

[1]Patrick L Remington, Bridget B Catlin and Keith P Gennuso, “The County Health Rankings: rationale and methods,” Population Health Metrics, April 17, 2015, https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12963-015-0044-2. Note that the County Health Rankings model does not account for genetics and biology, which are not measurable or modifiable.

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2837459/

[3]Ibid.

[4]http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/app/new-jersey/2018/overview

[5]https://societyhealth.vcu.edu/work/the-projects/mapstrenton.html

[6]http://www.nationalcollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/hope_chartbook_final-1.pdf

[7]Although life expectancy for Latinx people is higher than for whites and higher than the U.S. average, the data include individuals born in the United States as well as individuals born outside the United States. Individuals born in the United States tend to have lower life expectancy than those born outside the United States. A growing body of research explores other potential reasons for longer life expectancy among Latinx populations relative to what would be expected based on their income and education levels. See: Neil K. Mehta et al., “Life Expectancy Among U.S.-born and Foreign-born Older Adults in the United States: Estimates From Linked Social Security and Medicare Data,” Demography: August 2016, 53(4): 1109-1134, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026916/; Paola Scommenga, “Exploring the Paradox of U.S. Hispanics’ Longer Life Expectancy,” Population Reference Bureau, July 12, 2013, https://www.prb.org/us-hispanics-life-expectancy/

[8]https://www.njpp.org/healthcare/new-jerseys-individual-market-premiums-to-be-among-the-lowest-in-the-nation

[9]https://www.njpp.org/reports/increasing-the-minimum-wage-to-15-would-boost-the-economy-and-help-over-1-million-workers-but-not-if-the-legislature-stalls

[10]United Way of Northern New Jersey, ALICE Report 2019: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3huycfbak512t2/18_UW_ALICE_Report_NJ_Update_10.19.18_Lowres.pdf?dl=0

[11]http://rocunited.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/OneFairWage_W.pdf

[12]https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-the-earned-income-tax-credit

[13]https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/policy-basics-state-earned-income-tax-credits

[14]https://www.cbpp.org/blog/state-eitc-expansions-will-help-millions-of-workers-and-their-families

[15]https://www.njpp.org/budget/eitc-expansion-would-provide-a-crucial-boost-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-new-jerseyans

[16]http://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-work/resources/workplace/paid-leave/the-child-development-case-for-a-national-paid-family-and-medical-leave-insurance-program.pdf

[17]https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/images/NJ_HIA_-_Full_ReportApril2011_0.pdf

[18]http://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-work/resources/workplace/paid-sick-days/paid-sick-days-lead-to-cost-savings-savings-for-all.pdf

[19]https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2012/07/30/sick-leave/

[20]https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Jersey_City_ESD_Issue_Brief.pdf

[21]https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/the-foundations-of-lifelong-health-are-built-in-early-childhood/

[22]https://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2014/rwjf414926

[23]https://prekourway.org/assets/Pre-K-Our-Way_ExpandNJsPreK_OCTOBER_2018.pdf

[24]https://prekourway.org/assets/Pre-K-Our-Way_WINTER-2018_Newsletter.pdf

[25]http://blog.tstc.org/2016/12/13/nj-transit-lacks-dedicated-funding-thats-not-normal/

[26]https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2014/01/education–it-matters-more-to-health-than-ever-before.html

[27]https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/unkept-promises-state-cuts-to-higher-education-threaten-access-and

[28]https://www.njpp.org/budget/opportunity-lost-consequences-and-shortcomings-of-the-fiscal-year-2019-budget

Defending Reproductive Rights in New Jersey by Improving Access to Health Care for All

Posted on by Jazmyne McNeese

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

Access to safe, accessible, and medically competent reproductive health care in the United States is under concentrated and powerful attack. A more radical Supreme Court now puts in jeopardy key reproductive health services like Title X federal funding for family planning and the constitutional right to abortion. The current political climate provides progressive-leaning states like New Jersey an urgently important opportunity to develop and enact forward-thinking reproductive health care policy.

This report highlights some of those opportunities by examining a wide cross section of gaps and disparities in New Jersey’s reproductive health care landscape. The selected issues include:

  • Expanding access to contraception and abortion
  • Addressing maternal and infant mortality disparities
  • Providing dignity for people who are incarcerated
  • Expanding health care for undocumented immigrants

This sampling was chosen due to its urgency, invisibility, and vulnerability to political attacks. By highlighting a cross-section of issues, the report aims to foster renewed interest among policymakers and advocacy organizations in pursuing state-level policy that guarantees every individual—regardless of circumstances or identity—equal access to reproductive health care services.

The reproductive health care gaps identified in this report are based on a series of one-on-one interviews conducted with community leaders and advocates from several organizations representing communities that chronically face barriers to reproductive health care (see the list at end of the report). Those facing these challenges due to their circumstance, income, or identity include, but are not limited to, women of color, people who are undocumented, LGBTQI communities, incarcerated people, people with disabilities, indigenous high-poverty communities, young people, and residents of rural areas. As experts of their own lives, community members and leaders from these groups are best equipped to inform policy changes that can improve those lives.

By focusing on those who have been historically underserved, this report follows the example of the groundbreaking work of Reproductive Justice, the movement created by women of color as an alternative to the mainstream reproductive rights framework. To be clear, this report was developed by individuals who are not associated with Reproductive Justice organizations. Rather, the intention is to inspire New Jersey stakeholders to invest in the principles developed by leaders of the Reproductive Justice movement and champion legislation that embodies the Reproductive Justice framework. For more information about the history of the Reproductive Justice movement and framework, see Appendix I.

Reproductive Health Care Policy in the Garden State

New Jersey has a strong record for advancing reproductive health care policy, but programs that serve low-income people, especially women of color, have chronically been vulnerable to funding cuts.[1] For example, $7.5 million in annual state grants for family planning services, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and cancer screenings for low-income residents were cut from the state budget for eight consecutive years.[2] Those cuts forced six of the 58 family planning clinics in the Garden State to close. Of the 136,000 mostly low-income patients served by New Jersey’s family planning clinics each year, many were left to find care elsewhere or skip care altogether.[3]

With a new governor in office, New Jersey has taken steps to correct course. Through advocacy efforts led by Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey, that funding has finally been restored. In addition, more people now have access to reproductive health services through the state’s Medicaid program which covers comprehensive contraceptives, abortion care, and prenatal care. More recently a pilot home visitation program providing parenting support to at-risk families has been established and $4.3 million in grants has been committed to address New Jersey’s dismal black infant mortality and maternal health rates.[4][5]

Still, there are many outstanding issues that demand policymakers’ attention. These issues persist because the advancement of reproductive health policy in the Garden State has failed to actively dismantle the ongoing, systemic oppression of women of color and other historically marginalized groups. When marginalized communities are absent at the forefront of a movement, chronic health care gaps and disparities can persist and worsen, harming the very communities most vulnerable to institutional injustice. Though presumably unintentional, the effect is ubiquitous. To improve reproductive health care access for everyone in New Jersey, policymakers must work to eliminate unnecessary barriers and focus resources on communities that historically have been the most disadvantaged. See Appendix II for examples of recent and pending legislation that represent the kind of forward-thinking policy agenda being advocated for in this report.

Improving Access to Contraception and Abortion

 The scope of reproductive health care is not limited to contraception and abortion care, but these specific services have long been targeted for political reasons. Given the intensified political climate on the national level around reproductive health care access, it is vital that New Jersey defend these services from ideological attacks by expanding access through multiple avenues. In the following discussion of contraception and abortion, when we refer to people who can become pregnant, we emphasize the inclusion of women, transgender men, and gender non-conforming people.

Contraception

 A person’s ability to plan, prevent, and space pregnancy is directly linked to their ability to access contraception. New Jersey has a responsibility to ensure that all people who can become pregnant, regardless of their circumstance, have control over their reproductive health decisions—and by extension their economic status—by removing unnecessary or outdated barriers to contraceptive services. New Jersey could begin by removing payment and logistical barriers that most impact communities vulnerable to patterns of institutional bias and discrimination.[6] Improving the lives and well-being of all families through better access to family planning services helps New Jersey conserve health care resources by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, which cost the state over $185 million in 2010 alone.[7]

One immediate opportunity to remove harmful barriers is to require health insurance companies to provide a 12-month supply of birth control instead of 6 months—a measure that has been shown to cut down on both costly doctors’ visits and unintended pregnancies. According to a University of California, San Francisco study, dispensing a one-year supply of birth control at a time is associated with a 30 percent reduction in the likelihood of unplanned pregnancy.[8] Twelve states have mandated that health insurers cover an “extended supply” of birth control; several other states have pending legislation.[9]

 Should federal efforts to defund Title X be successful, New Jersey must step in and ensure that low-income communities continue to receive family planning care in a seamless manner. The state Medicaid program should also address several lingering logistical barriers. For example, offering long-acting reversible contraceptives, like IUDs, to patients immediately after giving birth, would dramatically expand contraceptive options for low-income parents. But billing logistics have stymied widespread implementation. Just before the release of this report, a first step toward improving this important access gap has been addressed. Another technical fix to make the process seamless for both the health care provider and the patient is under review.[10] New Jersey should also allow Medicaid recipients access to emergency contraception (EC) without the unnecessary extra step of having to obtain a prescription first—a logistical barrier left over from the George W. Bush era.[11] Requiring all retail pharmacies in the state to stock and dispense EC would greatly improve people’s ability to obtain this time-sensitive medication as well as improve another avenue toward reducing the rate of unintended pregnancy.

Abortion Care 

New Jersey has upheld the right to abortion care since the procedure was legalized under Roe v. Wade. Just as importantly, the state has largely remained outside the national trend of state-level abortion restrictions like waiting periods and gestational limits. Across the country, over 1,000 anti-abortion laws have been enacted with a notable increase in the last several years.[12] In fact, the state Constitution has been interpreted to provide more expansive protections for the right to privacy and the right to end a pregnancy than the federal Constitution does, even with the protections of Roe v. Wade.[13] Yet, barriers to abortion care remain in the Garden State, primarily due to inadequate insurance coverage and efforts by anti-abortion organizations to diminish access through harassment, intimidation, and deception. For uninsured or under-insured individuals who wish to end a pregnancy, the cost of care can be out of reach. According to a 2014 Guttmacher Institute national survey, 75 percent of abortion patients are low income and a majority paid for their abortion care out of pocket, even though most had health insurance coverage. Due to the large number of patients paying out of pocket for services, abortion providers have strived to maintain affordable cash fees. Still, the financial expense of accessing abortion care extends beyond the medical cost with a substantial number of patients reporting additional expenses such as transportation, childcare, and lost wages.[14] When faced with these unexpected expenses, some patients may be forced to delay paying bills, borrow money, or seek assistance from a privately-run abortion fund like the New Jersey Abortion Access Fund—options that can create unnecessary delays.

Before Roe v. Wadelegalized abortion nationwide, the class divide in access to the procedure was clear cut. Those in need of abortion care but without financial resources had no access to safe medical services. Those with means travelled to states like New York where the procedure was legalized in 1970. In the first two years, 60 percent of abortion patients were from outside the state.[15] AfterRoe, the Hyde Amendment was swiftly enacted, blocking all federal funds from paying for abortion information, referrals, or care. Recognizing this clear violation of state control over reproduction and decision-making, New Jersey opted in to use state funds to support Medicaid access to abortion services thereby mitigating the impact of the Hyde Amendment. New Jersey remains one of only twelve states to do so.

Despite this decades-long commitment, many abortion providers in New Jersey struggle to cover costs due to low reimbursement rates from both Medicaid and the private insurance sector. Even when private insurers have appropriately negotiated reimbursement rates, many people are still unable to utilize their policies to access abortion care. For example, some private policies do not cover abortion services for policy holders or dependents, or policies may have increasingly high deductibles, which forces many patients to pay for services out-of-pocket.[16] The overall effect of underfunding leaves health centers trying to provide high-quality care to everyone regardless of ability to pay while keeping the doors open in a safe environment for patients and staff. Independent abortion providers, committed to maintaining meaningful access to abortion care throughout pregnancy while enduring the bulk of harassment by anti-abortion extremists, feel this financial strain most acutely. As reproductive rights continue to erode across the county, now is the time for New Jersey to invest in expanding and preserving abortion access.

 Increasing Medicaid Reimbursement Rates for Abortion Providers: A Case Study

 Cherry Hill Women’s Center (CHWC), a premier independent abortion provider in Camden County, New Jersey, is a prime example of this struggle. CHWC specializes in providing first and second trimester abortion care and other reproductive health services, inspired by their belief in the autonomy of the individual and their commitment to strengthening communities. Yet, because abortion care is a highly politicized and stigmatized health service, it carries its own set of unique challenges and obstacles that increase operating costs.

For decades, abortion providers have faced the risk of violence at the hands of anti-choice extremists, creating unusual security needs that other health care facilities do not have. This includes security guards, secure entry, 24-hour closed-circuit video cameras, bullet-proof glass, high-level security trainings, and coordination of clinic volunteers to escort patients through protestors. Screening of patients, staff, and vendors is needed to eliminate the opportunity for anti-abortion extremists to breach security, violate privacy, and/or commit violence. All these safety measures require resources that may need to be diverted from health care services and clinic sustainability. Given the alarming increase of anti-abortion rhetoric at the federal level, there has been a notable increase in violence meant to disrupt care and intimidate patients and staff members.[17]

The threat of violence also has a ripple effect on other aspects of operating an independent abortion clinic like CHWC. It makes it more difficult to contract necessary services, such as facility maintenance, medical waste disposal, and the purchasing of medical supplies. Targeting by anti-abortion extremists also makes it difficult to recruit and retain medical professionals to perform abortion procedures due to their own safety and privacy concerns. Abortion providers are already hard to recruit due to limited access to training, low-reimbursements, and increasingly high insurance costs.

Medicaid reimbursement rates fail to consider not only the true cost of health care, but the unique costs associated with providing abortion care in a safe and secure setting. Simply put, Medicaid reimbursement rates for abortion care have not kept pace with medical care costs and certainly do not account for the complex challenges faced by abortion providers.[18]

Taken as a whole, abortion providers remain at an economic disadvantage due to the burden of these unavoidable extra costs. As it stands, the United States has a limited number of facilities qualified to provide abortion throughout all stages of pregnancy, particularly the third trimester. Policymakers looking to improve and expand abortion access in New Jersey can start by increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for a medical service that has been politicized and stigmatized for far too long.

Fake Women’s Health Centers

 Everyone deserves unbiased, evidence-based health information, regardless of their zip code or financial situation. In New Jersey, this value is exemplified by mandated comprehensive sex education curriculum. Thorough and accurate sexual health education provides young people with the tools they need to make decisions about their health and well-being. Unfortunately, there are organizations operating in New Jersey with the sole intention of derailing access to legitimate reproductive health care services.

Fake women’s health centers, or crisis pregnancy centers, have become a well-established tactic used by anti-abortion extremist organizations with the intention of misleading women seeking pregnancy options, counseling, or abortion care.[19] They use false and deceptive advertising to lure unsuspecting pregnant women to a facility staged to look like a legitimate health care clinic, where staff attempt to coerce them to continue their pregnancies using false medical information, shame, and religious rhetoric.[20] Some of these unlicensed, unregulated “clinics” even provide cursory health services like ultrasound imaging to manipulate women.[21]

Fake women’s health centers have also infiltrated the public school system, offering supplemental abstinence-only sex education based in misinformation and stigma.[22] This puts students at a dangerous disadvantage, making them vulnerable to deception when accessing reproductive health care in the future. This kind of lapse speaks to the need for a comprehensive inventory of New Jersey’s existing sex education curriculum and funding sources, which includes federal “abstinence-only” dollars.[23] Fortunately, a review of New Jersey’s existing sex education curriculum for grades one through 12 is scheduled for 2019. Plans to re-evaluate federal contracts, update the standards, develop sample lesson plans, provide more sex education training for teachers, and incorporate an evaluation tool to ensure accountability are important steps toward getting New Jersey back on track as a strong supporter for comprehensive sex education.

But more commonly, fake women’s health centers target vulnerable women by burgeoning in underserved communities and offering their services free of charge, potentially increasing systemic inequalities.[24][25] Similar to the sex education example above, the proliferation of these health centers in New Jersey is an indicator of ongoing gaps in health care access. Most New Jersey counties have only one family planning clinic, and nearly one in four women live in a county with no abortion provider at all.[26] These gaps put those with limited finances and access to transportation at risk of being duped by fake women’s health centers. Addressing these gaps by increasing the availability and access to qualified health care providers, as well as clearly indicating where people can access these services, will have the biggest impact on the lives of New Jersey women seeking legitimate reproductive health care.

Addressing Maternal and Infant Mortality Disparities

When maternal health care needs go unmet—whether incidentally or systematically—the health and well-being of parents and children are put at serious risk. For decades, New Jersey’s Black families have been at a greater risk than anyone else.

While the overall maternal death rate in New Jersey has improved over time and is below the national rate, enormous racial disparities have persisted. Black women in New Jersey are more than four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women.[27] Similarly, the likelihood of a New Jersey infant dying before their first birthday has recently dropped and is slightly lower than the national rate. Yet, the disparity between white and Black infant mortality in New Jersey is the worst in the country. A Black infant born in the Garden State is three times more likely to die than a white infant, regardless of their mothers’ income level or educational attainment.[28]

Research suggests that Black women are susceptible to dangerous pregnancies and birth outcomes due to “weathering,” the cumulative effects of racism on one’s health and well-being.[29] The chronic stress of discrimination in all aspects of society—from housing to employment to picking up groceries—may negatively affect the body causing it to age prematurely. These effects may “weather” African American women more acutely than other women resulting in high-risk reproductive health issues.[30]

New Jersey’s dismal Black maternal mortality rate is not breaking news to the state’s Health Department. Since 1931, it has reviewed maternal health outcomes with detailed research about the root causes of its high maternal mortality rate and possible causes of the stark racial and ethnic disparities. But, like other states, New Jersey has failed to find long-lasting solutions to close the racial gap in maternal health. With a new governor in office, interest in the issue has been renewed. Another maternal mortality review commission has been established, a proposed infant mortality review board is moving through the legislature and grants have been awarded to community-based organizations in high-risk areas to help coordinate maternal care including doula pilot programs in Newark and Trenton.

These targeted efforts are based on similar work taking place North Carolina, one of the few states that have successfully closed the racial gap in maternal health.[31] Doctors there are incentivized through Medicaid reimbursements to screen pregnant women for issues that may trigger a high-risk pregnancy. Patients that have either physical or psychological risks are connected to a “pregnancy care manager” who helps expectant mothers follow their care plan by addressing a wide range of barriers. The North Carolina Pregnancy Medical Home program provides support for everything from access to insulin to housing issues to helping offset both the physical stress of pregnancy and the physical stress in one’s life that has real consequences on one’s health.

In addition to the state-supported medical home model, over 60 North Carolina birthing hospitals have conducted several statewide quality improvement efforts including cutting down on inducing birth before a baby’s due date and improving rapid response treatment of mothers with gestational hypertension and preeclampsia—two of the most severe and dangerous health issues among African American mothers.

Studies also show that in countries with a generous parental leave policy there are tremendous effects on morbidity and mortality rates of infants and young children.[32] New Jersey is one of only four states that have implemented a paid leave policy providing workers and their families the opportunity to take time off work to bond with a new baby or adopted child or care for an elderly or very sick family member. However, very few New Jersey workers utilize the program because they are either not aware of it, or they fear negative repercussions at work, including job loss. In addition, workers struggling to balance work and family caregiving simply can’t afford the low wage replacement rate that is offered by the program.

Meanwhile, there are stark disparities among New Jersey mothers who take paid leave. Between 2012 and 2015, white women in New Jersey were 3 times more likely to take leave than Black women.[33] National research has shown that workers of color are more likely to work for firms that don’t offer family leave insurance.[34] New Jersey is poised to make major improvements to its existing Family Leave Insurance program including promotional efforts so that more workers take advantage of the program. However, the current bill may leave 750,000 workers without job protection putting their household economic security at risk.

The next step for New Jersey is to strengthen its Family Leave law and move beyond demonstration projects and pilot programs. One key component to addressing racial disparities in maternal health care is found in making the leap toward sustainable funding for medical home models in at-risk communities, higher Medicaid reimbursement rates for obstetric services in the hospital setting, and Medicaid coverage for related services including doula care and home visitation.

In fact, state legislators have recently introduced a bill to provide state Medicaid coverage for doula services. Doula care, non-clinical emotional, physical, and informational support before, during and after birth, is associated with lower caesarian section rates, fewer obstetric interventions, fewer complications, shorter labor hours, and healthier newborns. These improvements are critical for Black mothers who are disproportionately at risk for pregnancy-related complications and are routinely subjected to the inherent biases of medical staff that can have life or death consequences.[35] Doula care has been proven to reduce health disparities, improve health outcomes, and improve quality of care, especially in low-income communities.[36] Studies have shown potential cost savings, even if doula care services are partially covered.[37]

Dignity for Those Incarcerated

 Regardless of circumstance, everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. In the prison setting that includes having the right to serve a sentence free of abuse, to access appropriate health care, and to maintain parenting obligations. Key criminal justice policy reform like the expansion of drug courts and the overhaul of the bail system has helped New Jersey reduce its prison population by almost a third (28 percent) since 2000.[38] That trend has fared better for New Jersey women as the men’s prison population has declined by a smaller proportion.

Still, stark disparities persist. According to a 2016 report, New Jersey has the nation’s highest rate of Black/white disparity with African Americans being incarcerated in state prisons 12 times the rate of imprisonment of whites.[39] As a comparison, the national disparity rate is five to one.

To the state’s credit, a newly mandated racial and ethnic impact statement provides an overdue opportunity for lawmakers to address this glaring disparity by reviewing a statistical analysis of the impact of proposed criminal justice policy changes. It is a vital first step toward making informed decisions about improving public safety without exasperating existing racial disparities. Now it is time for policymakers to do the same for gender disparities in the criminal justice system.

Multiple studies show that there is a direct link between women with a history of trauma, substance use disorders, poverty, and mental health problems and their eventual contact with the criminal justice system, where these problems are often exacerbated. New Jersey’s only women’s prison serves as a sobering example.

The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, which houses about 650 inmates, is currently the subject of at least 11 lawsuits related to sex abuse allegations including a class-action suit that details a history of abuse at the prison since the early 1990s.[40] An independent review has been commissioned by the State Attorney General’s Office and a federal civil rights investigation is underway. Four staff members have been convicted, and three other correctional officers face trial.

Despite laws and procedures in place to ensure the safety of inmates, the Department of Corrections has systematically failed to protect these women. Policymakers’ response to this horrific pattern of abuse and inaction has been to propose ways of improving existing procedures. This is a missed opportunity to look beyond the deficiencies of the correctional system and instead shine a spotlight on the unmet needs of Edna Mahan’s prison population.

According to the Vera Institute for Justice, many jailed women experience mental illness and extremely high rates of victimization—including childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence.[41] New Jersey’s correctional system has not only failed to properly treat women inmates, it has re-traumatized women through unchecked abuse of power. Even standard practices such as strip searches have the potential to retraumatize victims of sexual assault. A former inmate involved with the class action lawsuit said she came forward to help women like herself who “had to live with monsters just to come to a different place and have to live with a new set of monsters.”[42]

To improve conditions at Edna Mahan, state legislators have introduced bills that are primarily focused on codifying existing policy, including the prohibition of shackling pregnant women, limitations on the use of strip searches, and the expansion of the correctional ombudsman’s role to include sexual assault.[43] While these responses are notable, more must be done.

New Jersey’s criminal justice system is one that is primarily designed for the incarceration of men. To improve conditions in a meaningful way, reform must begin with identifying the unique needs of a prison population comprised entirely of women. An inclusive overview of Edna Mahan’s population would provide an opportunity to improve and expand access to health care that meets the needs of its inmates, including reproductive health care for individuals across the gender spectrum. This path toward meaningful reform should begin with policymakers sitting down with formerly incarcerated women and advocates who represent the interests of incarcerated women.

Expanding Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants

 Health care access is a fundamental right for everyone regardless of where they come from or how they arrived in the country. Yet, this right is routinely denied to undocumented families living in New Jersey due to financial and travel barriers to health care services.

Federal restrictions to programs that provide health care coverage, job-training, nutrition, and cash assistance vary depending on the immigration status of noncitizens. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act/Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 created two categories of immigrant community members: “qualified” or “not qualified.”[44] In addition, the federal law banned legal immigrants who are permanent residents or green card holders from accessing a variety of welfare services or health care programs for a period of 5 years beginning on the date of entry into the United States.[45]

However, states do have the power to implement their own health care policies. For example, state health plans in six states and Washington D.C. cover all children, regardless of immigration status and health plans in 17 states cover all pregnant women, regardless of immigration status. New Jersey is not among these states, but there is movement to change that.[46][47]

While the Garden State has made great strides in reducing the overall uninsurance rate for children to 3.5 percent, there are still 70,000 kids who remain uninsured. Half of these children are undocumented immigrants not eligible for coverage through NJ FamilyCare, the state Medicaid program. Making the well-being of all children a priority would provide long-range health and social savings to the state. Children who are covered by Medicaid are more likely to do better in school, finish high school, attend college and graduate from college, have fewer emergency-room visits and hospitalizations, and earn more as adults.[48]

New Jersey would also benefit in the long run if undocumented immigrant adults also became eligible for health care coverage, starting with those who can become pregnant. Currently, undocumented women—including DACA recipients and women who have held lawful permanent resident status for less than five years—have no access to health care coverage including coverage for preventative reproductive health services. New Jersey should extend health coverage for all undocumented women by offering a full range of reproductive health services. Modeled after Oregon’s Reproductive Health Equity Act, this comprehensive measure would provide undocumented individuals with health care coverage for contraceptives and related services including counseling, voluntary sterilization, screenings for pregnancy, pregnancy care, birth services, sexually-transmitted infections and cancers, and abortion care.[49]

In addition to expanding Medicaid coverage, policymakers should address additional barriers to health care that undocumented families face every day. For example, immigrant rights advocates are pushing to join the 12 states and DC that already allow all residents to obtain a driver’s license, regardless of immigration status.[50] Though seemingly unrelated, expanding eligibility to a driver’s license to all qualified individuals in the state would profoundly improve the ability to access to health care. Transportation barriers created by the inability to access a driver’s license and fear of being detained at a routine traffic stop equate to real obstacles for undocumented people, missed doctor’s appointments and delays in picking up prescriptions. The outcomes have negative health implication and are especially detrimental for time-sensitive, pregnancy related care.[51] Transportation barriers are particularly harmful for those with lower incomes or those who are underinsured or uninsured.

 Special Thanks To:

 Cherry Hill Women’s Center

Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

National Immigration Law Center

Garden State Equality

Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic

Women Who Never Give Up

National Council of Jewish Women – Essex County

American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch

New Jersey Family Planning League

Family Planning Association of New Jersey

American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey

New Jersey Abortion Access Fund

Unitarian Universalist Faith Action New Jersey

National Institute for Reproductive Health

State Innovation Exchange

Appendix I: Reproductive Justice Definition and Resources

Reproductive Justice is both a theoretical framework and a social movement created by women of color in the Southern United States as an alternative to the mainstream reproductive rights movement. Sister Song describes Reproductive Justice as the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social, and economic well-being of individuals, based on the full achievement and protection of human rights.[52] The issues central to Reproductive Justice impact one’s right “to not have children using safe birth control, abortion, or abstinence; the right to have children under the conditions we choose; and the right to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments.”[53] By centering the unique, interconnected identities that shape the lives of women within the movement, organizations using the Reproductive Justice framework present a holistic vision with which to challenge policy decisions entrenched in reproductive oppression.

By placing bodily autonomy and the right to access abortion care within the larger human rights framework, Reproductive Justice illuminates the intersections of seemingly unrelated issues like police violence, inhumane immigration policies and environmental racism.

The concept, in part, grew out of the acknowledgment that communities of color and other marginalized groups were often left out of reproductive rights advocacy work, which traditionally centers on abortion rights. This limited scope fails to account for the historical reproductive oppression of people of color engrained in the United States, including forced sterilization, medical experimentation, and family separation. By framing reproductive rights around the issues of “choice” and “privacy,” the mainstream movement for reproductive freedoms have effectively silenced the voices, experiences, and circumstances of women who historically have had to contend with racial and economic injustice. For example, shortly after Roe v. Wadewas decided in 1973, Congress quickly passed the Hyde Amendment, banning federal dollars from being used to provide abortion care. The failure of reproductive rights advocates to immediately mobilize against this policy has had a devastating and long-lasting effect on access to abortion care for poor women. Despite a 1993 modification that extended coverage in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life, the Hyde Amendment remains a major barrier to abortion care, especially for women of color and immigrants.

For more information, we encourage you to look to the Reproductive Justice organizations led by people of color advancing policy campaigns that reflect the unique needs of their communities and the historical work of Reproductive Justice leaders.

Appendix II: Recent and Pending Legislation in New Jersey That Reflect a Reproductive Justice Framework

Endnotes

[1] In this report, low-income generally refers to those with incomes at 200 percent or less of the federal poverty guidelines which in 2018 is just over $50,000 per year for a family of four.

[2] NJ.com, Eliminated by Christie 8 Years Ago, $7.5M for Women’s Clinics is Making a Comeback, January 2017. http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/01/eliminated_by_christie_8_years_ago_75m_for_womens.html

[3] Last year 94 percent of those seeking care at family planning clinics had incomes at 200% or less of the federal poverty guidelines (Interview with New Jersey Family Planning League).

[4] P.L.2017, Chapter 50, An Act Establishing a Home Visitation Pilot Program in Medicaid, Approved May 1, 2017. https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2016/Bills/AL17/50_.PDF

[5] New Jersey Department of Health, DOH Announces $4.3 million to Reduce Disparities in Birth Outcomes and Black Infant Mortality, April 2018. https://nj.gov/governor/news/news/562018/approved/20180430a_birthoutcomes.shtml

[6] AMA Journal of Ethics, “Vulnerable” Populations: Medicine, Race, and Presumptions of Identity, July 2011. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/vulnerable-populations-medicine-race-and-presumptions-identity/2011-07

[7] Guttmacher Institute, State Facts About Unintended Pregnancy: New Jersey, August 2017. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/state-facts-about-unintended-pregnancy-new-jersey

[8] Obstetrics & Gynecology, Number of Oral Contraceptive Pill Packages Dispensed and Subsequent Unintended Pregnancies, March 2011. https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/2011/03000/Number_of_Oral_Contraceptive_Pill_Packages.8.aspx

[9] California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, and Vermont. Colorado, Maine, Oregon and Washington State laws go into effect January 2019. Guttmacher Institute, Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives, August 2018. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/insurance-coverage-contraceptives

[10] New Jersey Department of Human Services, Division of Medical Assistance & Health Services, NJ FamilyCare Coverage of Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptive Devices, Newsletter Volume 28 No. 18, October 2018. https://www.njmmis.com/documentDownload.aspx?fileType=RecentNewsLetters

[11] Emergency contraception is not a medical abortion. Emergency contraception works primarily by delaying or inhibiting ovulation. Emergency contraception will not work if a woman is already pregnant. For more information about the difference between these two medications, see this fact sheet from the American Society for Emergency Contraception http://www.cecinfo.org/custom-content/uploads/2013/03/MedAbort_FactSheet_2013_ASEC.pdf

[12] Guttmacher Institute, Last Five Years Account for More Than One-quarter of All Abortion Restrictions Enacted Since Roe, January 2016. https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2016/01/last-five-years-account-more-one-quarter-all-abortion-restrictions-enacted-roe

[13] See Planned Parenthood of Cent. New Jersey v. Farmer, 165 N.J. 609, 629, 762 A.2d 620, 631 (2000) (“The language of that paragraph is ‘more expansive … than that of the United States Constitution….,’ it incorporates within its terms the right of privacy and its concomitant rights, including a woman’s right to make certain fundamental choices. Thus, in New Jersey, we have a long-standing history that begins even prior to Roe v. Wade, demonstrating a commitment to the protection of individual rights under the State Constitution.”) (citations omitted); id. at 632-33 (“Our inquiry begins with an examination of the nature of the affected right. We have earlier discussed the importance of a woman’s right to control her body and her future, a right we as a society consider fundamental to individual liberty. Although we will not repeat that discussion here, we are keenly aware of the principle of individual autonomy that lies at the heart of a woman’s right to make reproductive decisions and of the strength of that principle as embodied in our own Constitution. We have not hesitated, in an appropriate case, to read the broad language of Article I, paragraph 1, to provide greater rights than its federal counterpart. Our precedents make clear that the classification created by the statute is deserving of the most exacting scrutiny.”) (citations omitted).

[14] Women’s Health Issues, At What Cost? Payment for Abortion Care by U.S. Women, May-June 2013. https://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867(13)00022-4/fulltext

[15] New York Times, ’70 Abortion Law: New York Said Yes, Stunning the Nation,April 2000. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/nyregion/70-abortion-law-new-york-said-yes-stunning-the-nation.html

[16] Guttmacher Institute, Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008, 2016. https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014

[17] National Abortion Federation, 2017 Violence and Disruption Statistics, 2017. https://5aa1b2xfmfh2e2mk03kk8rsx-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017-NAF-Violence-and-Disruption-Statistics.pdf

[18] Guttmacher Institute, Assessing the Gap Between the Cost of Care for Title X Family Planning Providers and Reimbursement from Medicaid and Private Insurance, January 2016. https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pubs/Title-X-reimbursement-gaps.pdf

[19] NARAL Pro-Choice America, The Truth about Crisis Pregnancy Centers, January 2017. https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/6.-The-Truth-About-Crisis-Pregnancy-Centers.pdf

[20] Ibid 19

[21] Ibid 19

[22] Blue Jersey, Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are in Our Schools, Teaching Our Children, April 2018. http://www.bluejersey.com/2018/04/crisis-pregnancy-centers-are-in-our-schools-teaching-our-children/

[23] Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, State Profiles Fiscal Year 2017: New Jersey, July 2018. https://siecus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NEW-JERSEY-FY17-FINAL-New.pdf

[24] Although this paper seeks to include all those who can become pregnant, including women, transgender men, and gender non-conforming people, fake women’s health centers only target those they perceive to experience pregnancy, namely cisgender women.

[25] AMA Journal of Ethics, Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical, March 2018. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/why-crisis-pregnancy-centers-are-legal-unethical/2018-03

[26] Guttmacher Institute, State Facts About Abortion: New Jersey, May 2018. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/state-facts-about-abortion-new-jersey#7

[27] NJ Spotlight, Black Mamas Highlight Racial Maternal Health Disparities, April 2018. http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/18/04/24/black-mamas-highlight-racial-maternal-health-disparities/

[28] NJ Spotlight, Racial Disparity in Infant Mortality Remains Persistent Public Health Challenge, June 2017. http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/17/06/05/racial-disparity-in-infant-mortality-remains-persistent-public-health-challenge/

[29] Human Nature, Do US Black Women Experience Stress-Related Accelerated Biological Aging? A Novel Theory and First Population-Based Test of Black-White Differences in Telomere Length, March 2010. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861506/

[30] Journal of Women’s Health, The Impact of Racism on the Sexual and Reproductive Health of African American Women, July 2016. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939479/

[31] Vox.com, Black Moms Die in Childbirth 3 Times as Often as White Moms. Except in North Carolina, July 2017. https://www.vox.com/health-care/2017/7/3/15886892/black-white-moms-die-childbirth-north-carolina-less

[32] Texas A&M University, Why American Infant Mortality Rates are So High, October 2016. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.htm

[33] NJ Department of Health and The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (NJ PRAMS), Employment, Workplace Leave and Return to Work Among New Jersey Mothers, March 2018. https://www.nj.gov/health/fhs/maternalchild/documents/workforce_mar2018.pdf

[34] Ibid 33

[35] Choices in Childbirth, Overdue: Medicaid and Private Insurance Coverage of Doula Care to Strengthen Maternal and Infant Health, January 2016.https://choicesinchildbirth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/DoulaBrief_FINAL_1.4.16.pdf

[36] Ibid 35

[37] Ibid 35

[38] Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000, 2015 in The Sentencing Project, Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons, 2016. http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/

[39] The Sentencing Project, Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons, 2016. http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/

[40] NJ.com, Sex Abuse Scandal at N.J. Women’s Prison Keeps Getting Worse, July 2018. https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/07/sex_abuse_scandal_at_nj_womens_has_sparked_at_leas.html

[40] Vera Institute of Justice, Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform, August 2016. https://www.vera.org/publications/overlooked-women-and-jails-report

[41] NJ.com, Locked Up, Fighting Back: More Than a Dozen Female Inmates Accused an Officer of Abuse, January 2017. https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/page/locked_up.html

[42] NJ.com, New Crackdown on N.J.’s Women’s Prison Pushed Amid Sex Abuse Claims, May 2018. https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/05/lawmakers_push_crackdown_on_nj_womens_prison_amid.html

[43] National Immigration Law Center, Overview of Immigrant Eligibility for Federal Programs,December 2015. https://www.nilc.org/issues/economic-support/overview-immeligfedprograms/

[44] U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Summary of Immigrant Eligibility Restrictions Under Current Law, February 2009. https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/summary-immigrant-eligibility-restrictions-under-current-law#sec

[45] States with health plan that cover all children include Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts.

[46] National Immigration Law Center, Health Coverage Maps, January 2018. https://www.nilc.org/issues/health-care/healthcoveragemaps/

[47] The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Medicaid Helps Schools Help Children, April 2017. https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicaid-helps-schools-help-children

[48] Reproductive Health Equity Act (OR HB 3391), 2017. https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB3391

[49] New Jersey Policy Perspective, Let’s Drive New Jersey: Expanding Access to Driver’s Licenses is a Common-Sense Step in the Right Direction, January 2018. https://www.njpp.org/reports/lets-drive-new-jersey-expanding-access-to-drivers-licenses-is-a-common-sense-step-in-the-right-direction

[50] The Journal of Rural Health, Access to Transportation and Health Care Utilization in a Rural Region, Winter 2005. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15667007

[51] SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice & Social Change, 2007. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/courses/fileDL.php?fID=4051

[52] Ross, Roberts, Derkas, Peoples, Bridgewater Toure, Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique, November 2017.

New Immigration Rule Will Have Chilling Effect on New Jersey’s Mixed-Status Families

Posted on by Erika J Nava

To read a PDF version of this report, click here. 

A drastic change in the “public charge” rule proposed by the Trump administration would restrict access to green cards and various types of visas for immigrants who are not already comparatively well-off. This “Trump Rule” fundamentally changes our approach to immigration, making family income and potential use of health care, nutrition or housing programs a central consideration in whether or not to offer people an opportunity to make their lives in this country. The Trump Rule takes an existing standard and proposes to make it vastly more restrictive.

The Chilling Effect

The direct effect of the Trump Rule would fall primarily on people applying for a green card through a family-based petition,where public charge is relevant. Similar standards would also apply to people seeking to extend or change their temporary non-immigrant status in the United States. The rule change would likely lead to the denial of green cards to hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible applicants for family-based and employment visas.

Beyond that, if implemented the Trump Rule is also expected—and perhaps intended—to have a widespread chilling effect. Even people who already have a green card, or who are exempt from the rule, such as refugees or asylees, are expected to be frightened and confused about the potential consequences of applying for food, health, and housing supports they are eligible to receive.

We estimate that 24 million people in the United States would be affected by the chilling effect of the Trump Rule, including 700,000 New Jerseyans. Not all will face a public charge determination, but all are likely to be nervous about applying for benefits, and some portion will in fact disenroll from benefit programs.

Our estimate of the population who may experience a chilling effect includes anyone in a family that has received any food, health, or housing supports, and where at least one member of the family is a non-citizen. Based on past experience, there is good reason to believe that when there are changes around immigration and public benefits even people who are not directly targeted by this rule will be affected. Indeed, there is already evidence that significant numbers of immigrants are withdrawing from Women, Infants, Children, known as WIC, despite the fact that the program is not included in the Trump Rule and the rule has not yet been implemented.[1]

The Trump Rule Goes Too Far

The Trump Rule uses the public charge designation as a way to unilaterally change immigration policy, without input from Congress, fundamentally redefining how we think about who an “acceptable” immigrant is and undercutting the very idea of the American Dream.

The pre-existing public charge rule has required immigration officers to evaluate the overall circumstances of immigrants to determine whether they can support themselves in the United States or whether they are likely to rely primarily on the government for support. Under longstanding policy, this has meant showing an applicant will not become primarily dependent on the government—relying, for example, on cash aid from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, or General Assistance for their monthly income, or on long-term institutional care.

The Trump Rule aggressively reinterprets this longstanding policy. While continuing to look at the overall circumstances of a family, the Trump Rule would deem immigrants potentially unacceptable if they have received, or are considered likely to receive, even a modest amount of support from any one of a number of non-cashsupports: Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP), housing supports, and subsidies for Medicare Part D to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. It would also—for the first time—make a specific income threshold a central issue in immigration decisions. Having an income of under $15,000 for a single person or $31,000 for a family of four would be weighed negatively and could lead to a denial. Indeed, the rule proposes to weigh a range of factors negatively. The only factor weighed as “heavily positive” is if an applicant has an income or resources of over $30,000 for a single person or $63,000 for a family of four. By way of comparison, the median household income in the United States is $60,000.[2]

As noted, only some non-citizens currently in the United States will face this Trump Rule; many will not. But what would it look like if we applied the Trump Rule to all non-citizens?

The effect is extreme: in New Jersey State, 22 percent of non-citizens have benefited from health care, food, housing, or cash supports. That should come as no surprise: so have 25 percent of US-born New Jerseyans. The fact is, a large number of Americans—whether or not they are immigrants—make use of federal food, health, and housing programs in any given year to get through hard times and to advance to a better life.

Most of these programs are structured in significant measure as work supports, helping people with relatively low-wage jobs keep healthy, stay in their homes, and put food on the table. Discouraging families from making use of these programs only makes it harder for them to move up the economic ladder and fully contribute to the economy.

Further Inhumane Treatment of Kids to Pressure Families

The nation was outraged to find out that the Trump Administration has been using the forced separation of children from their parents as an inhumane tactic of immigration enforcement.[3] The redefinition of public charge doubles down on this strategy by inflicting harm on children, whether intentionally or as a side effect of the Trump Rule.

Some children will themselves be subject to the Trump Rule.[4] A far greater number live in families that will likely experience a chilling effect. In New Jersey, 250,000 children under 18 years old live in families with at least one non-citizen family member and that have received one of the benefits specified by the Trump Rule. The large majority or 84 percent, 210,000 of the 250,000 are United States citizens.

It also pushes parents to make heart-wrenching decisions for their families. The stakes are unbearably high. As a parent, if you apply for SNAP or Medicaid, you may fear losing the chance to stay in this country with your kids. Yet, not applying may mean seeing your family go hungry or not being able to see a doctor when you are sick.

If the Trump Rule is put into effect, advocates and service providers will need to work strenuously to clarify which individuals may be directly impacted and which may be relatively safe. But confusion and fear will undoubtedly spread well beyond the directly targeted population.

Helping children in immigrant families do well is not only the right thing to do, it’s also a sound investment in our state and the nation’s future. One of the clearest and most striking findings in a major study of the National Academy of Sciences is that the children of immigrants, once grown, become among the strongest contributors to the country’s economy.[5]

An Economic Loss for New Jersey

To measure the economic impact on New Jersey, we modeled the impact of two of the biggest supports the Trump Rule would affect: SNAP and Medicaid. We provide estimates of the impacts if 15, 25, and 35 percent of people currently receiving benefits who experience the chilling effect feel compelled to disenroll from programs for which they qualify. This range of disenrollment is derived from studies of comparable policy changes that similarly created a chilling effect for immigrants, such as welfare reform in the 1990s.[6] The middle-level estimate shows a loss of $425 million in direct federal dollars coming into the state.

If money on this scale is withdrawn from the New Jersey economy, there would be predictable ripple effects to local businesses and workers. Withdrawal of SNAP funding means a reduction in spending in grocery stores and supermarkets. When families lose health insurance, hospitals and doctors lose income.[7] And some spending would be reduced in other areas as families struggle to pay food and health costs. Our mid-level estimate shows a potential loss of $709 million due to the ripple effects of this lost spending.[8]

Further, when businesses have less revenue, they lay off workers. Translating the job loss implied by an economic loss of this magnitude, based on the number of jobs implied per dollar of gross domestic product, New Jersey stands potentially to lose as many as 4,800 jobs under our middle estimate as a result of this reduction in federal funding coming to the state.[9] The economic impact would vary depending on where the country is in the business cycle. Because these programs serve as an important economic stabilizer, they create a bigger stimulus during an economic downturn and less in a period of high growth.

At the lower level, with just 15 percent of people receiving benefits disenrolling, the modeled loss of federal dollars to New Jersey State is $ 220 million, the potential economic ripple effects are $425 million, and the potential job loss is 2,900. At the higher estimate, with 35 percent disenrollment, the loss of federal funds in New Jersey is $514 million, the potential ripple effects are $992 million, and there could be as many as 6,800 jobs lost.

Conclusion

From the beginning, the United States has been a place where immigrants have come to make a new life. In this country, many immigrants and US-born workers alike have climbed from the lowest rungs of the economic ladder into the middle class and beyond. It was the opportunities America provided—and often enough the supports they needed to get started or make it through hard times—that allowed them to succeed. This is the story of the American Dream. And it is the story engraved in poetry on the Statue of Liberty.

The Trump Rule sees America’s story differently, as one governed by barriers and fear of newcomers. By suggesting that only immigrants who are already above a certain income threshold are welcome, the Trump Rule shows a disturbing lack of faith in our country and the opportunities it provides.

Methodology

  1. Estimating the Population That Would Experience a Chilling Effect

We define the population that would experience a chilling effect as those who might be nervous and confused by the new rule and might feel like they need to make a choice between applying for needed benefits and avoiding putting their family at risk. As noted in the body of this paper most of the people experiencing a chilling effect are people who will not have to go through a public charge determination.

In order to estimate the size of the population experiencing a chilling effect, the Fiscal Policy Institute uses estimates provided by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) of the number of people living in families where at least one person is a non-citizen, and where someone in that family has received one of the public benefits named in the proposed public charge rule. The analysis uses the Current Population Survey and corrects for underreporting of SNAP, TANF and SSI receipt in the Census survey using data from the Department of Health and Human Services/Urban Institute Transfer Income Model (TRIM). These TRIM corrections take into account program eligibility rules by immigration status. Three years of data are combined in order to increase sample size and improve the reliability of the state-level estimates: 2013 to 2015, the most recent for which the TRIM-adjusted data are available. National level estimates are based on data just from 2015.

CBPP’s calculations of program participation include the newly considered programs —Medicaid, SNAP, and housing benefits—as well as those already considered—TANF, SSI, and General Assistance. The Census data for Medicaid used by CBPP also include the closely intertwined Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Most participants can be expected to have a very hard time distinguishing between a program funded by Medicaid and one funded by CHIP. The proposed rule does not presently include CHIP, but the notice announcing the proposal explains that the administration is considering including it. Medicare Part D low-income subsidies are included in the proposed rule but were not included in CBPP’s estimates due to a lack of a Census variable that identifies those participants. To model the current public charge benefit related test, CBPP looked at those people who get more than half of their income from TANF, SSI, and General Assistance.

  1. Estimating the Economic Loss to New Jersey

Among the people who experience a chilling effect, some portion would go so far as to disenroll from programs for which they are eligible.

The estimate of the direct loss to New Jerseyans from disenrollment from these programs begins with SNAP, Medicaid and CHIP federal funding data. The estimates use administrative and survey data to approximate the amount of benefits received by families that include a non-citizen. This is the population that due to fear or confusion could forgo benefits even though most of them are themselves not likely to be subject to a public-charge determination. In estimating the economic consequences of the Trump Rule, we assume that only a portion of this group will actually disenroll from these food, health, housing, or cash supports. While a lot is at stake for people in families with a non-citizen immigrant if they fear running afoul of the public charge rule, there is also a lot at stake in not applying and having your family go hungry or lack health insurance. Again, we include CHIP in our estimates.

In our estimates, we assume a range of 15 to 35 percent of the people experiencing a chilling effect will disenroll from SNAP and Medicaid. We provide estimates of the economic effects of the higher and lower disenrollment rates as well as the midpoint of 25 percent. In doing this, we follow the Kaiser Family Fund’s paper of February, 2018, “Proposed Changes to ‘Public Charge’ Policies for Immigrants: Implications for Health Coverage,” which provides a review of the literature leading to this estimate range.[10] We do not attempt to simulate the consequences of adverse selection—for instance, that healthier people may be more likely to withdraw from health care coverage than less healthy people. The 15, 25, and 35 percent disenrollment rates are already a broad range and not a precise prediction.

To estimate the economic ripple effects, the Fiscal Policy Institute uses an analysis provided to us by Josh Biven of the Economic Policy Institute. The analysis takes the direct benefit loss as calculated above and applies to it an output multiplier for SNAP of 1.6, in line with estimates Bivens summarizes in a 2011 paper.[11] The Medicaid multiplier is 2.0 and is drawn from an analysis of the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.[12]

After calculating the effect of benefit reductions on output, the output was divided by $146,880 to obtain an estimate of the effect on employment, on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis. This employment multiplier was obtained by dividing U.S. gross domestic product in 2017 by the number of FTEs in that year.[13]

 The economic impact can be expected to vary with the state of the economy. The economic and job loss of the Trump Rule will be greater in times of high unemployment, and lower in times of full employment. Since the Trump Rule is proposed to be permanent, the effect could be expected to vary.

Endnotes

[1] See Helena Bottemiller Evich, “Immigrants, Fearing Trump Crackdown, Drop Out of Nutrition Programs,” Politico, September 3, 2018.

[2] The rule gives a family income of below 125 percent of the federal poverty level as a negatively weighing factor, and above 250 percent of the poverty level as a positively weighing factor. We translate those into dollar figures for different family sizes using the 2018 poverty level. Household income is a Fiscal Policy Institute analysis of the 2017 American Community Survey 1-year data. Household income includes individuals of varying size including households of just one person.

[3] As Attorney General Jeff Sessions put it: “we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”[iii]See Rafael Carranza and Daniel González, “AG Sessions Vows to Separate Kids from Parents, Prosecute All Illegal Border-Crossers,” The Republic, May 8, 2018.

[4] Disturbingly, for those children who do apply for status that requires a public charge designation, the Trump Rule penalizes children by weighing their age negatively. The theory, presumably, is that children do not adequately contribute to the economy.

[5] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2017. For a brief synopsis of major findings, see the press release at http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=23550.

[6] Our estimate of disenrollment follows the analysis of “Proposed Changes to ‘Public Charge’ Policies for Immigrants: Implications for Health Coverage,” Kaiser Family Foundation, September 24, 2018. That report cites: Neeraj Kaushal and Robert Kaestner, “Welfare Reform and Health Insurance of Immigrants,” Health Services Research,40(3), (June 2005), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361164/; Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel, Trends in Noncitizens’ and Citizens’ Use of Public Benefits Following Welfare Reform 1994-97 (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, March 1, 1999) https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/69781/408086-Trends-in-Noncitizens-and-Citizens-Use-of-Public-Benefits-Following-Welfare-Reform.pdf; Namratha R. Kandula, et. al, “The Unintended Impact of Welfare Reform on the Medicaid Enrollment of Eligible Immigrants, Health Services Research, 39(5), (October 2004), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361081/; and Rachel Benson Gold, Immigrants and Medicaid After Welfare Reform, (Washington, DC: The Guttmacher Institute, May 1, 2003), https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2003/05/immigrants-and-medicaid-after-welfare-reform.

[7]  Uncompensated care funds must also be replenished to make up for losses in emergency care of people without health insurance, but this cost is not included in our analysis of the economic impacts.

[8]The extent of employment impact depends on the state of the overall economy, with a higher impact during times of high overall unemployment, when these programs serve as both a safety net and an automatic economic stabilizer. Since the Trump Rule would be a permanent measure, there would be periods in the economic cycle the predicted economic impact would be higher and when it would be lower.

[9] The analysis of direct loss to New Jersey was performed by Danilo Trisi of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the analysis of economic ripple effects was performed by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. See Methology section for more details.

[10] That report cites as the underpinning for this range of estimates: Neeraj Kaushal and Robert Kaestner, “Welfare Reform and Health Insurance of Immigrants,” Health Services Research,40(3), June, 2005; Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel, Trends in Noncitizens’ and Citizens’ Use of Public Benefits Following Welfare Reform 1994-97 (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, March 1, 1999); Namratha R. Kandula, et. al, “The Unintended Impact of Welfare Reform on the Medicaid Enrollment of Eligible Immigrants, Health Services Research, 39(5), October 2004; and Rachel Benson Gold, Immigrants and Medicaid After Welfare Reform, (Washington, DC: The Guttmacher Institute, May 1, 2003).

[11] Josh Bivens, “Method Memo on Estimating the Jobs Impact of Various Policy Changes,” Economic Policy Institute, November 8, 2011.

[12] Any slowdown in the growth of aggregate demand caused by reductions in spending on these programs could in theory be neutralized by the Federal Reserve Bank lowering rates to spur growth. However, this does not change the size of the fiscal drag that benefit cuts would impose on the economy. These estimates are implicitly a measure of how much harder other macroeconomic policy tools would have to work to neutralize the demand drag stemming these cuts. Further, it is deeply uncertain whether other tools of macroeconomic policy have the ability to neutralize negative fiscal shocks. See Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Laura Feiveson, Zachary Liscow, and William Gui Woolston, “Does State Fiscal Relief During Recessions Increase Employment?,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2012, pp. 118-145.

[13] Data for the analysis come from tables 1.1.5 and 6.5 from the National Income and Product Accounts of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The quotient was increased by the growth in its nominal value in 2017 to forecast what it would be in 2018.

New Jersey’s Individual Market Premiums to be Among the Lowest in the Nation

Posted on by Raymond Castro

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

New Jersey’s ongoing efforts to protect the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are starting to pay off: all middle class New Jerseyans who purchase their insurance in the individual market will pay far less than they otherwise would have next year and for the foreseeable future. These major savings will be available to New Jerseyans who exceed the income cut-off for federal subsidies, which is $48,560 a year for an individual and $100,400 for a family of four. Time is of the essence as consumers can maximize saving by selecting a plan before the open enrollment period ends on December 15.

This relief could not occur at a better time since these same New Jerseyans were hit with a whopping 19 percent increase in their premiums this year as the Republican-led Congress and Trump administration worked tirelessly to undermine the individual market.[1] That made insurance unaffordable for many New Jerseyans and was one of the major reasons why the number of residents in the individual market decreased by about 40,000 in 2018.[2]

Thanks to the following actions taken by the state to reverse the federal ACA sabotage, consumers will be able to achieve major savings starting next year:

  • Establishing a reinsurance program that will reimburse insurers for individuals with unusually high medical costs, which will be mainly supported with federal funds.
  • Maintaining the federal individual mandate for New Jerseyans who can afford insurance.
  • Encouraging insurers to offer lower-cost Silver (mid-level) plans.
  • Launching a state outreach campaign, Get Covered New Jersey, that will result in healthier New Jerseyans obtaining insurance, and therefore a further reduction in premiums and the state’s uninsurance rate.

Middle-Class New Jerseyans Will Pay $3.3 Billion Less in Premiums Over Ten Years 

The New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance (DOBI) estimates that the new reinsurance program will guarantee that premiums will be 15.1 percent less than they would have been otherwise. Maintaining the federal individual mandate will further reduce premiums by 6.8 percent, for a total reduction of 21.9 percent.[3] In 2019, the average consumer will pay a premium of $5,700 instead of $7,300,[4] a savings of $1,600 which will total at least $23,000 over 10 years (adjusting for inflation).[5]

All 140,000 middle class New Jerseyans in the current market will save a total of $3.2 billion over 10 years compared to what they would have paid.[6] This estimate is conservative as it does not consider an increase in the number of additional individuals who will obtain insurance because of the lower cost nor the savings that will be achieved from the other initiatives outlined in this report.

New Jersey Premiums Will Rank Fourth Lowest in the Nation

Remarkably, premiums for the Silver plan[7] (which is the most popular) will drop from 9th highest in 2014 to 47thin the nation in 2019. The main reason is the growth in premiums in New Jersey is the second lowest in the nation. New Jersey’s increase (9 percent) was eight times lower than the average for all states in the Marketplace (75 percent). Adjusting for inflation, there was essentially no increase in New Jersey. This is in stark contrast to premiums for employer-based insurance in New Jersey, which was fifth highest nationally in 2013 and increased to fourth highest in 2017.[8]

Whereas in 2014 premiums in New Jersey were 18 percent higher than the national average, next year they will be 26 percent lower. New Jersey’s average premium next year will be far less than its neighboring states: Delaware (94 percent less), Pennsylvania (38 percent less) and New York (61 percent less).

New Reduced Silver Plans Could Mean Even More Major Savings 

For the 2019 plan year, DOBI encouraged carriers to offer less expensive Silver plans which could prove to be a game changer for consumers. This year, Silver plans were kept artificially high because insurers had to factor in President Trump’s decision not to fund cost sharing reduction payments even though insurers were still required to maintain the reduction for policyholders. This did not affect consumers who received federal premium subsidies because those subsidies were increased to compensate for the higher premiums. However, consumers who were not eligible for premium subsidies had to pay for the full increase this year. That will not be the case for next year, which will result in several lower cost options. Seven new Silver plans have been added, two of which have the lowest Silver premiums.[9] Overall, the total number of plans off the Marketplace increased to 32 in 2019 from 28 in 2018 mainly due to the increase in Silver plans.

This will mean that the base rate for the lowest premium Silver plan will be reduced to $240 in 2019 from $312 in 2018, a 23 percent reduction.[10] For households that currently have the lowest Silver plans and want to switch plans to continue to have the lowest plans, the savings could be major. A family[11], 27-year-old single adult and 60-year-old single adult could see annual savings of $3,264, $792, and $1,944 respectively.[12] In addition, consumers who have higher cost Silver plans, or have Gold plans, may want to reconsider these new less expensive Silver plans next year even though the cost-sharing likely would be higher.

However, the two lowest cost plans, and three other higher cost Silver plans, will only be available to individuals who purchase insurance off the Marketplace.These plans will not even be listed in the Marketplace. These off the Marketplace options may be found at GetCovered.NJ.gov and purchased directly through carriers.

Premiums Reduced by 14 Percent or More in Half of Plans in Individual Market

DOBI estimates a 9.3 percent[13] average weighted reduction next year for all plans compared to this year. Of course, there will be some plans that exceed this average and those that fall below it. The table below shows the premium reduction in all current plans, which ranges between six and 22 percent, and that half of the plans exceed 14% or more.[14] Bronze plans had the least reduction (10 percent) and the Gold and Silver were similar (12 and 13 percent respectively). The good news is that premiums in the individual market for all middle class New Jerseyans should decrease this year unless their household situation changed. However, as is always the case, consumers should shop around for the best deal possible including new plans that are not listed below.

Endnotes

[1] KFF, Marketplace Average Benchmark Premiums, 2014-2019, https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/marketplace-average-benchmark-premiums/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

[2] NJ DOBI, Total Lives Comparison, 2018 and 2019, https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/enroll/2018_1q_ihc_coveredcomparison.pdf

[3] Gov. Murphy’s Office, Governor Murphy Announces Impact of New Jersey’s Actions to Stabilize the Health Insurance Market, 2018. https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562018/approved/20180907a.shtml

[4] The 21.9 percent premium reduction was applied to the projected baseline premium for 2019 in New Jersey Section 1332 State Innovation Waiver-Individual Reinsurance Program, Oliver Wyman, June 27, 2018

[5] Estimate is conservative because as individuals age their premiums go up which was not considered in the analysis.

[6] Same Section 1332 source as above but premium reduction was applied to each of the ten years.

[7] Based on second lowest benchmark Silver plan for a 40-year-old person, https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/marketplace-average-benchmark-premiums/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D

[8] KFF, Average AnnualSingle Premium per Enrolled Employee For Employer-Based Health Insurance, 2017https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/single-coverage/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Employee%20Contribution%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D

[9] NJ DOBI, 2019 and 2018 New Jersey Individual Health Benefits Plans and Rates, https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcrates_2018.pdfand https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcrates_2019.pdf

[10] Ibid.

[11] Assumes both parents are age 35, one child at 3 and one at 15.

[12] NJ DOBI,  IHC Premium Calculator, https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/IHC_Calculator_2018/IHC.HTM

[13] Gov. Murphy’s Office, Ibid 

[14] Not weighted.

Working with ICE: A Costly Choice for New Jersey

Posted on by Erika J Nava

To read a PDF version of this report, click here. 

New Jerseyans born outside of the United States – both documented and undocumented – make up more than a fifth of the state’s population and are an enormous benefit to New Jersey’s economy and culture. Now, almost two years into the Trump administration, undocumented immigrants who have been living productive lives in the Garden State are at increased risk of being detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sometimes with the help of local law enforcement.

When immigrants come in contact with local and state law enforcement agencies, it is standard practice for their information to be shared with federal authorities at the FBI and ICE. This practice is known as “Secure Communities.”[1] ICE can then request a “detainer hold,” which asks the local or state law enforcement agency to detain an immigrant for up to 48 hours beyond their release date. If local and state law enforcement choose to honor the request, ICE does not guarantee that it will pick up the detained individuals.

After peaking in 2009, ICE detainers in New Jersey steadily declined through 2015, but they are increasing under the Trump administration. From 2016 to 2017, ICE’s issuance of detainers has increased by 87.5 percent in New Jersey, compared to 40 percent nationally.[2] New Jersey has voluntarily honored these detainer requests, or “immigration holds,” at least 63 percent of the time,[3] compared to 54 percent nationwide.[4] By honoring detainers, New Jersey allows ICE to use local resources, without bearing any of the cost, to imprison people without due process. In many cases immigrants are held without any charges pending. These detainers come with a significant cost – both social and in real dollars – to New Jersey.

New Jersey’s local law enforcement has paid at least $12 million to voluntarily honor ICE detainer requests and hold immigrants in police facilities and jails.[5] This calculation assumes that immigrants were detained for the legally allowed 48 hours, when in reality most were held much longer. It is estimated that, on average, immigrants on detainer holds are incarcerated for twenty-four days past their release date, translating to a total cost of $139 million to local law enforcement over the last decade.

In the same time period, people who have been detained, and by extension their families and the broader economy, have forgone $5 million in lost wages.[6] This is part of the human cost associated with immigration holds; families with immigrants suffer from lost wages, businesses lose customers, employers have to bear the costs associated with employee turnover, and children of detainees are saddled with the emotional burden of losing a parent.

Further, over 34,000 immigrants who were issued a detainer were held in police custody for longer than the 48 hours legally permitted. This represents more than 9 in 10 of the 36,290 detainers issued between ICE’s formation in 2003 and April 2018 when the latest data are available. The ramping up of immigration enforcement is also reflected in immigration arrests,[7] which have increased in New Jersey by 43 percent, from 2,315 in 2016 to 3,311 in 2017. This is almost double the national increase of 23 percent.[8]

The AG Directive

Almost all of New Jersey’s counties – 19 of 21 – honor warrantless detainer requests from ICE.[9] Only two, Burlington and Union, do not. In Middlesex and Ocean Counties, warrantless detainer requests are honored, but only in limited situations. It is important to note, however, that all law enforcement agencies notify ICE of arrests for DUIs and indictable offenses per New Jersey Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive 2007-3 (AG Directive).[10]

The AG Directive was issued under Governor Corzine’s administration by then-New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram. The policy outlines how local, county, and state police should interact with individuals who they have reason to believe are undocumented immigrants. The directive is notoriously vague, leaving it up to police officers to interpret when, where, and how they question the status of individuals they suspect to be undocumented.

Since 2007, immigrant rights groups have expressed concern that this discretion results in law enforcement infringing on the rights of New Jersey residents. A 2009 study by the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University Law School found evidence of “improper police questioning and arrest of the state’s non-criminal Latino drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and commuters.”

A new directive that reigns in how and when local law enforcement interacts with ICE has the potential to make New Jersey safer for all by restoring trust and cooperation with law enforcement in immigrant communities. By entangling police with immigration enforcement, the current system disincentivizes immigrants from reporting crimes or calling 9-1-1 if they are in danger. For taxpayers, a new directive will provide transparency, accountability, and a more responsible use of public funds that promotes safety instead of sowing racial division.

Now, over a decade since the AG Directive was issued, New Jersey has a prime opportunity to adopt a new policy that better reflects the immigration realities under the Trump administration. New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, appointed only nine months ago, can and should adopt a new directive that recognizes the humanity of all New Jersey residents, ensures due process, and ends the practice of needlessly separating families.

Endnotes

[1] According to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secure Communities program, launched as a pilot program towards the end of the Bush administration and was expanded under the Obama administration, the goal was to cover all 3,181 jurisdictions within the nation and it did in 2013.

[2] New Jersey Policy Perspective analysis of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University on the Latest Data: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detainers. Data used FY 2016-FY 2017.

[3] Note from TRAC: ICE recorded that the law enforcement agency refused to comply with the ICE I-247 request. TRAC notes that the field ICE uses to track law enforcement agency refusals is not a required field in ICE’s database. Rather, entry of information is optional. The field is used to record a variety of different reasons why ICE “lifted”—that is withdrew—a custody transfer request. These recorded “lift” reasons often disagree with other information ICE records on whether the individual was actually booked into its custody. For example, ICE sometimes records that an agency refused its transfer request even though ICE records it assumed custody of the individual.

[4] New Jersey Policy Perspective analysis of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University on the Latest Data: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detainers. Data usedFY 2003 to April 2018.

[5] The total number of detainers from FY 2007-2017 was 31,171; we then multiply the cost per day, per inmate in 2015 from the Vera Institute’s report The Price of Prisons(https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending), which calculates that NJ spends an average of $61,603 per inmate or about $169 a day. Then we multiply that by two days held.

[6] The median individual wage for undocumented workers in the United States is $17,400 per year, according to an unpublished estimate from 2016 provided by Robert Warren, derived from his work published by the Center for Migration Studies. We estimate that it is 14% higher for undocumented immigrants in New Jersey, since the average family income for undocumented immigrants is 14 percent higher in New Jersey, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute published by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy analysis in Undocumented Immigrants’ State and Local Tax Contributions. Thus, we calculate the estimate by multiplying 34,171 (total detainers from FY 2007 to 2017) by $77 (wages lost per day detained) by 2 (days detained).

[7] The data is limited to what ICE refers to as “interior arrests.” According to ICE, the data does not include arrests made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when the individual is transferred to ICE for detention and eventual removal.

[8] New Jersey Policy Perspective analysis of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University on the Latest Data: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Arrest.

[9] Ending Cooperation with Warrantless ICE Detainer Requests.ACLU sent letters to every New Jersey county jail and asked about their detainer policy. (https://www.aclu-nj.org/theissues/immigrantrights/detainer-map)

[10] New Jersey Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive No. 2007-3 (https://www.nj.gov/oag/dcj/directiv.htm)

 

Congressional Threats to Health Programs Could Harm Millions of New Jerseyans

Posted on by Raymond Castro

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

For impact data by congressional district, click here. 

Heading into the midterm elections, polls have shown that the number one concern of Americans – both Democrats and Republicans – is health care. This concern is understandable, especially in a state like New Jersey, given the millions of people who would be affected by threatened changes in federal health policy, a renewed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or a scaling back of entitlement programs that are the bedrock of the nation’s safety net. Because New Jersey made the right decision to expand Medicaid under the ACA, repeal of that provision alone would result in the loss of health coverage for 800,000 New Jerseyans. In addition, there are other major threats to Medicare and the entire Medicaid program, as well as to residents who have pre-existing conditions or are uninsured.

The purpose of this report is to provide the facts that show how many New Jersey residents participate in the programs that could potentially be affected by these proposed changes statewide and by congressional districts (attached) using the most recent US census data released last month.Many New Jerseyans in all congressional districts could be affected by all the proposed changes, but the number varies based in the program and the congressional district.

Up to 1.7 million New Jerseyans on Medicaid could lose part or all of their coverage  

Medicaid has already been on the chopping block for the last two years. In legislation to repeal the ACA that almost passed Congress, Medicaid expansion would have been phased out completely, resulting in a half million New Jerseyans losing health coverage. Even worse in the long term, overall funding for Medicaid would have been permanently capped, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars in New Jersey and threatening health coverage for everyone on Medicaid. Because about two-thirds of Medicaid funding is for seniors and people with disabilities, they would most likely have been affected the most by such a major cutback. Also, one out of four children in New Jersey are covered by Medicaid.

Health coverage is threatened for up to 330,000 New Jerseyans who purchased their insurance directly

About 330,000 New Jersey residents rely on the individual market to obtain health care coverage. About 240,000 of them purchased their insurance through the federal Marketplace. It is in this category where most of the federal cutbacks have been made, such as eliminating funding for cost-sharing subsidies, eliminating the individual mandate and a reduction in outreach funds. Repeal of the ACA would result in the loss of coverage for most of these individuals. About 80 percent of all New Jersey residents obtaining health coverage in the federal Marketplace receive federal subsidies which protect them from high premiums. However, about 140,000 New Jerseyans do not receive these subsidies and had to pay for the full twenty percent increase in premiums this year.  Not surprisingly, as a result of these cutbacks, the enrollment in all these plans decreased by about 40,000 over the past year.

Up to 3.8 million New Jerseyans are threatened by proposals to effectively eliminate current protections for preexisting conditions

Protections in the ACA for Americans who have preexisting conditions remains one of the most contentious health issues in Congress. Because polls have shown that this is the most popular provision in the ACA, some Republican members of Congress have been quick to point out that they support continuing this protection. However, most of these same Republicans have supported allowing insurers to exclude essential benefits that these individuals need or to charge any premium they want, which would have the same effect as repealing the protection since virtually no one but the wealthy could afford necessary coverage.  In addition, the Trump administration has recommended in a Texas federal district court case that it invalidate the ACA’s core protections for people with preexisting conditions and allow non-compliant plans that would eliminate the availability of affordable comprehensive coverage. If the Texas court made such an adverse decision, and the Supreme Court upheld it, only an act of Congress signed by President Trump could remedy this problem.

Proposed federal cutbacks in Medicare threaten health coverage for up to 1.5 million New Jerseyans

Medicare is at major risk for cutbacks to offset the massive federal tax cuts that were enacted last year. The tax overhaul, which mainly benefits the wealthy, will deplete the federal revenues required to meet the escalating costs of Medicare, as well as other programs, in the future. Funding for Medicare represents 15 percent of the federal budget; the only other category that is slightly larger is Medicaid. Right after passage of these tax cuts, Republican leaders in Congress began to insist that “entitlement reform” was necessary to make up for these lost revenues. House Speaker Paul Ryan specifically mentioned Medicare as the “the biggest entitlement we’ve got to reform.” Some Republicans have also proposed privatizing Medicare by converting it to a voucher program for new beneficiaries that would limit how much an individual could spend on health care. Democrats, on the other hand, have been very protective of Medicare as it is, and some of them are urging different versions of a “Medicare for All” policy that would greatly expand Medicare for current beneficiaries and make many more Americans eligible.

Many of the 688,000 New Jerseyans who are uninsured could lose any opportunity to obtain health coverage

Remarkably, the ACA reduced the number of New Jersey’s uninsured by about a third. However, that still leaves too many New Jerseyans who are uninsured. About half of the uninsured (338,000 New Jerseyans) are eligible for Medicaid or tax credits under the ACA but would not be if the ACA were repealed or became more restrictive. Many of these eligible New Jerseyans do not seek insurance under the ACA because they do not know they are eligible for subsidies. Under the Trump administration, the open enrollment period was shortened by half and funding for navigators who help the uninsured apply for assistance was cut by about two-thirds. Repeal of the ACA would mean that all of these New Jersey residents would lose any hope of obtaining health coverage and the number of uninsured in New Jersey would jump to about 1.2 million.

Opportunity Lost: Consequences and Shortcomings of the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget

Posted on by Sheila Reynertson

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

New Jersey’s fiscal year 2019 budget, the first of Governor Murphy’s administration, signaled a much-needed reversal after nearly a decade of austere fiscal policy. After years of neglect, assets critical to New Jersey’s economic success, like K-12 schools, public transit, and county colleges all received modest increases in state funding. However, this year’s budget falls short in one key area that has plagued the state and its finances for three decades: there are simply not enough stable, long-term sources of new revenue to sustain these increased investments. Failing to implement adequate revenue streams is a missed opportunity that will make it more difficult for the state to meet its current and future obligations, including public employee pensions, corporate tax subsidy payouts, and payments to bondholders and debt service. This year’s budget could have – and should have – marked a new era for New Jersey’s finances, but it ended up kicking the proverbial can even farther down State Street and makes next year’s budget an even more dramatic test.

There’s one glaring difference between this year and next: in 2018, the elected officials participating in the budget process did not have to worry about a June primary or November general election. In 2019, every member of the General Assembly wanting to remain will be focused on re-election and less interested in making tough decisions to fund important investments. Instead, they’ll likely hope that the temporary hike in corporate tax rates (the most unpredictable and variable of the major taxes), accompanied by new taxes on ridesharing services, e-cigarettes, and what appears to be a surprisingly low tax rate on the proposed legalization of marijuana, will be adequate to meet New Jersey’s neglected needs. Revenue collections for the FY 2019 budget were above target in September, but lawmakers should not assume or rely upon such robust returns in the future.

Now that the dust has settled on New Jersey’s FY 2019 budget debate, one thing is certain: there is a lot more cleaning up to do. Though this year’s budget is the largest dollar amount ever, it is still a budget stretched thin. Many departments are making do with yet another year of flat funding and, even with the slightly increased budget surplus, New Jersey is still in no position to withstand another recession or extreme weather event like Hurricane Sandy. The state cannot afford to build another budget based on political convenience. There is simply too much at stake.

First the good news.

New Jersey’s FY 2019 budget is the most progressive document to come out of the state house in a decade. Despite significant compromises on funding sources, most of the policy initiatives championed by Governor Murphy during his gubernatorial campaign remain intact, and many of the progressive priorities of the legislature received support.

These top priorities include overdue investments into state assets that are proven to help economies grow. After years of financial neglect and passing operating costs onto commuters, New Jersey Transit got a boost of $242 million earmarked to improve services and the reputation of the state-run transportation network. New Jersey’s K-12 public schools received a $402 million increase in funding, and a noticeable overhaul of the school funding formula will help update how districts receive state assistance in response to changing demographics. By shifting additional funds to historically under-funded districts, New Jersey can support one of its most important assets – and the state’s children – in a more equitable way.

This year’s budget also acknowledges the importance of investing in New Jersey families by embracing progressive policies that lift up young children, young adults and working parents struggling to make ends meet. It includes an overdue expansion of pre-K education with an $57 million investment to enhance preschool programs for more than 4,000 3- and 4-year olds in qualifying districts.

For those entering college, there’s $27 million for a new tuition-free community college program, removing barriers to higher education for students in low-income households. Additionally, over 500,000 low-income workers will see the first of three annual increases in their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the best policy tools for lifting families out of poverty. And approximately 70,000 New Jersey families who make below $60,000 are now eligible for a new tax credit to help offset the cost of child and dependent care, an enormous expense for working parents.

For those families who are struggling the most acutely, New Jersey has finally increased funding for its cash assistance program for the first time in 31 years. The program also dropped the punitive family cap provision, an outdated deterrent that only served to punish Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients for having children while receiving cash assistance.

These investments were made possible with over $1.5 billion in additional revenue from a variety of new sources, including: a new 10.75 percent tax on multimillionaire income over $5 million (raising $280 million), a temporary corporate tax surcharge averaging 2 percent over the next four years ($425 million), expanding the sales tax to include internet purchases ($188 million), and a one-time general tax amnesty initiative ($200 million). A variety of new revenue streams, including new taxes on e-cigarettes, short-term housing rentals, and ride-sharing services, were also included in the budget, raising an additional $120 million. And a new rule that closes corporate tax loopholes will boost corporate business tax revenue by at least $110 million.

On the surface, these new revenue sources are an essential ingredient of Governor Murphy’s progressive vision. For example, in an era of runaway income inequality a new tax bracket on New Jersey’s earners with $5 million and more in annual income is long overdue. With $280 million more in income tax revenue, the state can provide a slight increase to its property tax relief programs which suffered in recent years from repeated cuts and delayed payments. Closing loopholes that multi-state corporations use to avoid taxation evens the playing field for all businesses operating in New Jersey. And a last-minute U.S. Supreme Court decision finally opens the door to taxing internet purchases made by New Jersey shoppers in other states, further modernizing the tax code. But because this funding package was built on a foundation of political horse-trading and compromise, it simply doesn’t have the durability and strength to help the state rebuild its key assets and invest in long-term initiatives.

Here’s why.

First, the new revenue sources lack the kind of long-term sustainability that New Jersey needs to face its neglected, underfunded obligations while also investing in assets and programs that support economic growth. To move away from instability and meaningfully combat inequality, New Jersey must think beyond temporary taxation and one-shot gimmicks.

Take, for example, the new income tax bracket of 10.75 percent on household earnings over $5 million. This new tax is much narrower in scope than the original proposal, which would have applied to households earning over $1 million and would have raised $765 million a year. The final policy spared approximately 31,000 wealthy households from a state income tax increase, even though these same households were just gifted unexpected federal tax breaks from Republicans in Congress on top of making outsized income gains since the end of the Great Recession.

The budget claims to address the generous federal tax breaks given to large corporations with an average two percentage point corporate business tax surcharge at the state level. The new tax is expected to raise $425 million the first year, improving the state’s ability to adequately fund the kinds of things that all businesses operating in the Garden State depend on: an educated workforce, public safety, and reliable transportation networks. But the tax policy has one fatal flaw – the surcharge expires in 4 years, opening the state to another large budget hole at precisely the moment New Jersey will begin paying off its flamboyant corporate tax subsidy program to the tune of $1 billion a year.

The rest of the budget’s new revenue sources consist of one-offs like the tax amnesty initiative and a mixed bag of smaller “sin” taxes on e-cigarettes, recreational marijuana and sports betting. These sources may bring in millions but, in the grand scheme of things, they are barely noticeable given New Jersey’s financial woes.

Major tax policy decisions made over the course of three decades contributed to this situation. To regain the stature of a state committed to paying for its obligations and fostering a fair and prosperous economic future, New Jersey must embrace meaningful and bold tax reform beyond short-term housing rentals and online sports betting.

Missed opportunities.

New Jersey could easily begin steering the ship back to safer waters by modernizing the state sales tax, a critical source for funding higher education, health care, public safety and other important public services that a thriving state economy requires. The state needs to both broaden the tax base to include more services, especially those used by higher income households, and return the sales tax rate to 7 percent. That gimmicky reduction passed in 2016 put an undetectable amount of extra cash into the pockets of most New Jersey working families. In exchange, it left an enormous hole in the state’s budget. The cost of the cut is about $600 million a year and is expected to reach $735 million by 2026.

For decades, New Jersey helped to close the wealth gap by levying both an estate tax and an inheritance tax and investing the resulting revenue in important assets like NJ Transit, public colleges and health care initiatives that benefit everyone. Unfortunately, state legislators agreed to phase out New Jersey’s estate tax as part of the 2016 gas tax deal. That change, which affected just 4 percent of estates, now costs New Jersey about $500 million a year, handicapping the state’s ability to make crucial investments while further enriching the heirs of New Jersey’s wealthiest families. Eliminating this tax gave estates that are valued at more than $5 million an average tax break of $1.1 million. Then, just one year later, the GOP tax plan lifted the threshold of the federal estate tax from $11 million to $22 million. Decades of uneven income and wealth growth have put the wealthiest residents miles ahead of everyone else. Now the tax code has only made it worse.

By restoring the estate tax with a higher threshold, New Jersey could regain the lion’s share of estate tax revenue it has collected while ensuring that the wealthiest heirs pay their fair share at the state level. For example, reinstating the tax on estates worth more than $1 million would recoup 93 percent of the tax revenue. However, if New Jersey is to depend on the inheritance tax as its only source of taxation of inherited wealth, then policymakers should make it fairer and more adequate by expanding the types of heirs required to pay the tax and ensuring that only New Jersey’s wealthiest heirs pay the tax. Creating an exemption up to $1 million would keep this tax fair and help guard against the deepening trend of concentrated wealth.

Policymakers ought to level the playing field and allow small businesses a better chance of competing with larger companies while raising the revenue necessary to help the entire economy thrive – not just the shareholder set. And federal changes that have drastically cut corporate taxes mean that New Jersey needs to do even more to ensure that all businesses have a fair shot while preventing larger corporations from gaming the system. New Jersey lawmakers should get creative while at the same time taking a defensive stance against tax breaks that hurt the state’s ability to provide public services and make investments that actually help the economy grow.

First, rein in corporate subsidy programs. In the aftermath of the GOP tax law, New Jersey must seriously consider the repeal or reform of the 2011 business tax breaks, like restoring the minimum tax on large pass-through entities to offset the new federal tax credit. Finally, policymakers ought to enact a financial transaction tax. Taking these bold actions could raise over $300 million a year in new corporate business revenue, while relieving long-term budget pressures that will plague New Jersey for years to come if not addressed.

Strategically protecting and investing in assets is what drove New Jersey’s thriving economy for decades. But since the early 1990’s, that enterprising and stable environment has eroded as political leaders of both parties neglected to maintain those assets through fair and equitable taxation. Obviously one budget won’t fix this trend, but New Jersey’s economic and financial freefall can’t begin its reversal with a year-to-year band-aid approach either. It’s time to restore equity to the state’s tax code while raising the resources needed to invest in assets and opportunities that drive economic growth for all of New Jersey’s families and businesses.

Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 is Critical to Growing New Jersey's Economy

Posted on by Brandon McKoy

Increasing the minimum wage will boost the take home pay of over 1 million workers – but not if the Legislature stalls

To read a PDF version of this report, click here.

Increasing New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2023 would boost the incomes of over 1 million workers and inject $3.9 billion into the state’s economy.[1] Raising the wage for all workers without significant delay is critically important to improving the economic conditions of families, businesses, and the state at large. While many believe that the state’s economy is stronger due to the reduced rate of unemployment – which has finally dropped below pre-recession levels – poverty still remains concerningly high, signaling a wage problem for low-income workers who aren’t paid enough to purchase their basic day-to-day needs.

Considering that lawmakers passed $15 minimum wage legislation that was inclusive of all workers in 2016, it is surprising and disappointing to see that – eight months into a new administration that supports raising the wage for all – a bill still hasn’t been introduced. There have been murmurs of extending the phase-in period beyond five years, leaving the tipped wage at its current paltry level of $2.13 per hour, and dividing the working class by excluding youth, seasonal, and farm workers from the increase. In an age where the federal government is actively attacking the economic security of the working class, it would be a terrible mistake for lawmakers to raise the wage but leave behind some of the state’s most vulnerable workers.

New Jersey’s recovery from the Great Recession has been one of the slowest and least robust in the nation. As we move further away from that economic crisis, it has become clear that even though the economy shows signs of increasing strength – unemployment levels lower than pre-recession levels, a booming stock market, and healthy GDP growth – the gains of the recovery have been funneled almost exclusively to the already wealthy and well-to-do. Wages have remained stagnant and low- and middle-income families continue to struggle to get by.

A recent survey by the Federal Reserve found that 40 percent of Americans cannot afford– or would have to sell possessions to cover the cost of – a surprise $400 expense. One in five adults say they can’t pay all of their current monthly bills. More than one in four adults report that they’ve forgone important medical care because they can’t afford it.[2] With such a significant share of the workforce still suffering from economic insecurity on a daily basis, it should be no surprise to anyone that inequality continues to grow as our economy lags behind the rest of the country. One can assume that the problem is broader and deeper in high-cost New Jersey.

Contrary to popular belief, the slow growth in wages and the consistent presence of higher poverty levels also has implications for the business community. Oftentimes, businesses don’t see low wages as a problem that hurts them, but the reality is that our economy is consumer-driven, meaning it relies on consumers (i.e. workers) being able to fulfill their demands and needs. When consumers don’t have the disposable income necessary to be full participants in the economy, that hurts businesses who are deprived of would-be customers.

Taking all of this into consideration, lawmakers should prioritize raising the minimum wage for all workers, and soon. When accounting for the cost of living, New Jersey’s $8.60 minimum wage falls $18.38 short of a living wage, ranking 5th worst in the country.[3] The longer this increase is delayed, the more the value of a $15 hourly wage erodes away and becomes insufficient to address the harmful issues it is meant to. Making sure that the most vulnerable workers in the Garden State are being paid a fair wage for their labor is critical to reducing poverty, reversing growing levels of income inequality, and strengthening our economy.

Opting to leave behind any portion of the workforce – as has been discussed recently by legislators in both houses – is unnecessary and cruel, and doing so fails to make our state stronger or fairer for those who suffer the most every single day. Coming to this conclusion isn’t difficult, all it requires is looking at the facts.

Poverty and Inequality Persist Amidst a Sluggish Recovery

While it is true that unemployment has dropped significantly in recent years – lowering to 5.3 percent in 2017 from 6 percent in 2016 and a high of 10.9 percent in 2011 – poverty rates are higher than they were before the recession. The official poverty rate in 2017 was 10 percent, up from 8.6 percent in 2007 and representing about 143,000 more people. However, considering the high cost of living in New Jersey, the 200 percent federal poverty level provides a more accurate picture of economic insecurity in our state.[4] Looking at this metric, the poverty rate in 2017 was a staggering 22.89 percent, up from 20.89 percent in 2007 and representing about 245,000 more people.

It is not surprising to see poverty remain higher as unemployment decreases considering the minimum wage is far below a livable wage. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has a useful tool called the “Family Budget Calculator” which helps measure the income a family needs “in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living.” The family budgets that the EPI calculator analyzes consists of seven areas: housing, food, transportation, child care, health care, taxes, and “other necessities” which includes things like clothes, basic household items, and school supplies.

According to EPI’s analysis there is no part of the state where a worker can reliably make ends meet on less than $15 per hour, not even a single adult with no children. For this type of worker, Camden county requires the lowest earnings at $17.84 per hour. Hunterdon County requires the highest earnings at $22.72 per hour. For families with two adults and one child, each parent would have to earn $17.32 per hour in Camden county and $22.26 per hour in Hunterdon County working full time.[5] Looking at the current minimum wage of $8.60, minimum wage workers in each county are earning less than half of what it takes to safely and reliably make ends meet.

As long as a significant portion of New Jersey’s workforce is unable to provide for themselves and their families, the state’s economy will continue to experience widening levels of inequality and sluggish economic growth. Fixing this problem is possible, but only if an increase in the minimum wage to $15 that is fully phased in by 2023 and includes all workers is enacted before the end of the year.

 

Raising the Wage Would Help a Diverse Array of Workers – Further Carve Outs Should Be Avoided and Youth, Farm and Tipped Workers Must Be Included

The number of workers who will benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $15 depends on how long the phase-in takes, but we reasonably assume that lawmakers would follow a phase-in schedule similar to the 2016 bill that was vetoed by Governor Christie. As such, we assume that the minimum wage would be increased to $10.10 an hour in the first step, on January 1, 2019, with four annual $1.25 increases to follow, bringing New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15.10 an hour by 2023.

Increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2023 would result in a $3.9 billion raise for approximately 1,047,000 workers, representing 26.3 percent of the state’s total workforce. Of that group about 792,000 would be directly affected, meaning they currently make less than $14.53 (the current dollar equivalent of $15.10 in 2023). Another 256,000 would be indirectly affected, meaning they make slightly more than the new minimum and would likely see their pay also increase.

Of those who would benefit, 57.3 percent are women, 57.2 percent are people of color, 94 percent are adults, 29.2 percent have children, 49.7 percent have attended or graduated from college, and 64.3 percent are working full time.

Most of the New Jersey workers who would benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $15 are in the retail, health care, and food service industries.

 

Existing Exemptions in New Jersey’s Minimum Wage Law

Lawmakers are currently considering carving out youth, farm, and tipped workers from the minimum wage increase. Doing so would be misguided and actively harm these workers, preventing them from earning more for their work and becoming more economically secure. With regard to carve outs, there is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding on what the current landscape is. There are already several carve outs that exist in New Jersey’s minimum wage law – for youth workers, employees at summer camps, college students, interns, school-to-work programs, tipped workers and farm workers:

  • Youth workers (under 18) are currently exempt from the state wage and hour law (see 12:56-3.2). However, the law provides a number of sectors where youth workers are explicitly included in the state minimum wage. Sectors where youth workers are explicitly included in the state minimum wage are: Mercantile occupations (12:57-3); Beauty culture occupations (12:57-4); Laundry, cleaning, and dyeing occupations (12:57-5); Light manufacturing and apparel occupations (12:57-6).
  • Employees of summer camps, which often includes many youth workers, are explicitly excluded from the state minimum wage. The minimum wage law is not applicable, “during the months of June, July, August or September of the year to summer camps, conferences and retreats operated by any nonprofit or religious corporation or association,” (34.11-56a4.1).
  • Concerning college students and interns, full time students employed by their university or college through a work study program may be paid 85% of the state’s minimum wage (12:56-3.2).
  • Interns or participants in “school-to-work” programs, regardless of age, may be excluded from the minimum wage. However, wage and hour regulations provide specific guidelines that must be followed to ensure that education is the primary objective of the position and that any productive labor is incidental to those educational goals (12:56-18).
  • Farm workers are currently required to be paid the state minimum wage, but they are not required to be paid overtime for any work over 40 hours per week, including piece work (34:11-5614).

Including as many workers as possible in the minimum wage increase is important to ensure that the most vulnerable workers in the state are better able to make ends meet. It would be wonderful to see lawmakers remove the carve outs that already exist but, at the very worst, they should not add to them.

Youth Workers

Carving out youth workers from a minimum wage increase is bad policy that unnecessarily puts teens at increased risk for poverty and other issues that come with economic insecurity.[6] Of all the workers that would benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2023, six percent are under the age of 20, equaling 63,355 total teen workers.

There’s a common stereotype that young workers are simply using their earnings to pay for video games and movie tickets, but that couldn’t be further from the truth for many who are seriously contributing to their family’s income. For teen workers who come from families that earn less than $50,000 per year, they contribute over $9,300 on average, or 18.6 percent. For families of color, teen workers contribute over $9,600 on average, or 19.3 percent.[7] That’s a significant amount and it shouldn’t be discounted. Especially considering that many teen workers in low-income families are saving for the cost of college to help avoid student loans, it would be callous to carve them out from the increase to $15 per hour.

Proposing to carve out teen workers isn’t just a bad idea when you look at the facts, it would also be hypocritical for New Jersey to do so. Just this year, the state passed an equal pay amendment that required women and men to be paid the same amount of money for similar work. To say that pay discrimination against women isn’t ok but pay discrimination against teen workers is would be incredibly hypocritical. Either work is work that should be valued no matter who does it or it isn’t. Lawmakers have already stated that they want to stamp out pay discrimination and they should extend that value to all workers, including teens.

Farm Workers

Some of the most vulnerable workers in the state are farm workers. They are generally people of color and immigrants who perform demanding, physical labor in difficult conditions. Simply put, farm workers are some of the workers that inspired the Fight for $15 movement due to the low wages they earn. Historically, New Jersey has never carved out farm workers from a minimum wage increase before, and to do so now would be an incredible mistake.

An analysis by Professor Michael Reich – an economist and chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley – found that New Jersey’s farm workers would benefit to the tune of a 20 percent increase in annual income.

Many have argued that farm workers must be carved out so that New Jersey can remain competitive in agricultural industries, believing that otherwise the state’s farms would be put at risk of closure. The analysis produced by Professor Reich shows that this opinion is false, concluding that food and produce prices wouldn’t have to increase significantly in order for farms to afford the rise in the minimum wage for their workers. Including farm workers in the increase would result in the price of a package of blueberries increasing just three cents a year annually. That is an incredibly insignificant change that is absolutely worth it to make sure farm workers can be included in the wage increase so they can better meet their needs and provide for their families.

Tipped Workers

New Jersey currently has about 193,000 tipped workers, of whom about 78,000 are waiters or bar staff and all of whom would benefit from increasing the tipped wage which is currently set at the federal level of $2.13 per hour.[8] If a worker doesn’t make the $6.47 in tips necessary to bring them to the state’s $8.60 an hour minimum wage, their employer is required to make up the shortfall – what is known as a “tip credit.” If an employee doesn’t earn enough in tips to make up the difference, the onus is unfortunately on them to ask their employer to bridge the gap – something that many tipped workers are hesitant to do for fear they could risk their job. There is significant evidence to show that tipped workers suffer from higher rates of wage theft than other workers.[9]

The federal $2.13 tipped wage has remained constant since 1991. Over those 27 years, its value has eroded by 46 percent to a value of just $1.15 in 1991 inflation-adjusted dollars, meaning it would have to be $3.94 in 2018 inflation-adjusted dollars to keep up with 1991’s purchasing power.

The gap between New Jersey’s tipped wage of $2.13 and minimum wage of $8.60 is already one of the largest in the country. To increase the minimum wage to $15 without increasing or completely phasing out the tipped wage would only make that gap larger and invite an increase in instances of wage theft.

Phasing out the tipped minimum wage would be smart policy for New Jersey to pursue. First, it would simplify regulations that owners of tipped businesses have to implement by eliminating the need to calculate wages owed to make up the gap between the tipped wage and the minimum wage. Second, it would make a tip a tip again. Tips would no longer serve as the primary source of income for workers, but represent a slight bonus awarded by the consumer for exceptional service. Besides, seven states – including the entire west coast of the United States – no longer have a tipped wage.[10] Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington have all decided that workers in traditional tipped industries should make at least the minimum wage like every other worker and, despite opposition claims to the contrary, their restaurant and food cultures haven’t become a wasteland of nothing but chain restaurants like Chili’s and Applebee’s.

Getting rid of the tipped wage would have the added benefit of reducing incidents of sexual harassment that female workers face in particular.[11] Because tipped workers are forced to rely on tips to make up the majority of their pay, they end up having to answer whatever whims – fair or otherwise – that customers or their bosses may want. The power dynamics present in these situations put the worker at a disadvantage, and many customers and owners fully exploit it. Phasing out the tipped wage would do away with those power dynamics and let workers focus on their jobs.

 

The Importance of $15 by 2023 – Further Delay Erodes Purchasing Power

The idea of a $15 minimum wage was introduced four years ago in 2014. Since then, the value of a $15 minimum wage has eroded significantly – $15 in 2014 is worth just $14.08 in 2018. If the original bill had been signed into law when it passed, the state would have reached a $15 minimum wage by 2019. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, leaving low-wage workers in a lurch. Following recent remarks from legislative leaders that this issue may bleed over into 2019, there is real concern that by the time the wage gets to $15, it won’t be nearly as valuable to low-wage workers as intended.

If the same bill that the legislature passed in 2016 were to be signed this year to take effect in 2019, we would be looking at a scenario where the minimum wage doesn’t reach $15 until 2023. Due to inflation, the delay of 5 years – reaching $15 in 2023 instead of 2019 – adds up to a loss of about 6.5 percent in purchasing power for low-wage workers. In other words, $15 in 2019 would only be worth about $14.02 in 2023, reducing the amount of real income low-wage workers would receive as a result of the policy change from $31,200 a year to $29,161. That’s a loss of over $2,000 in annual earnings for workers and families where every dollar is absolutely critical, and that hurts businesses that are losing out on profits from customers who would have spent that $2,000 locally and immediately. It’s worth noting that these projections don’t take into account changes in current national trade and economic policy that could lead to an increase in inflation, which would result in the value of $15 eroding even further.

If lawmakers hold off passing the $15 minimum wage legislation this year, the erosion from inflation will only significantly reduce what workers ultimately take home. To avoid that affect, it’s worth considering either reducing the phase-in period from 5 years to 4 years or less, or increasing the wage level beyond $15 to make up for lost time, or some combination of the two. The bottom line is that getting to $15 after 2023 dilutes the positive impact of the policy so significantly that simply tying wage increases to inflation after 2023 would be insufficient. Raising the wage to $15 by 2024 – eight years after the Christie veto– and claiming it will address issues of income inequality and poverty would be a dire mistake and a false promise.

 

While New Jersey Waits, States and Cities Across the Nation Make Progress

In recent years, several states and cities have passed $15 minimum wage legislation in response to the difficult and damaging economic realities that their residents are facing. Seattle voted to increase the wage to $15 in 2014, with the phase-in culminating in 2021 for all workers – employees at large companies started receiving $15 in 2017.[12] Los Angeles voted for its increase in 2015, with all workers receiving $15 by 2020.[13]

In 2016, California passed legislation that would see the state get to $15 by 2022.[14] In the same year, New York signed into law a bill that would increase the wage to $15 for all workers across all industries by approximately 2023 – large business in Manhattan had to get to $15 by 2018 and most workers will reach $15 by 2021.[15]

There are several more places that have voted to increase their wages, but the latest example is Massachusetts, which earlier this year became the third state to vote for a $15 minimum wage.[16] The Bay State opted to get to $15 by 2023, and in doing so included youth workers and increased the tipped wage from 30 percent of the state minimum to 45 percent. It is important to mention that while many view minimum wage increases as a campaign important only to Democrats, the Governor of Massachusetts is a Republican. For their legislation to get to $15 by 2023 and do so without carving out vulnerable workers goes to show that people of all political stripes can understand and support the need for all workers to benefit from this important policy change.

New Jersey is often compared to New York, Massachusetts, and California due to the characteristics we share of being a high-cost state but also having a highly educated workforce, median household income on the upper end of the spectrum, and a diverse population that benefits from vibrant immigrant communities. While New Jersey continues to drag its feet on raising the minimum wage, our contemporaries are moving forward with strength and taking the steps necessary to improve their economies for all of their workers, residents, and businesses.

Beyond economic considerations, there’s significant research to show that increasing the minimum wage helps lead to reductions in recidivism,[17] reductions in domestic violence and child abuse,[18] and reductions in teen pregnancy rates.[19] It is an important determinant of health outcomes and the American Public Health Association notes that income shapes one’s access to other important determinants of health like housing, education, and employment opportunities.[20]

Worries about job losses are belied not only by our own recorded history – when New Jersey last increased the minimum wage through the ballot in 2013 opponents said we’d lose 30,000 jobs[21] and instead we gained 90,000[22] – but also the experiences of business owners in states that have already increased their wage to $15.

Take for instance the story of Tom Douglas, a notable restaurateur in Seattle who owned 15 restaurants prior to the increase and strongly opposed the change, predicting that he would “lose maybe a quarter” of his restaurants in the city. Fast forward to post-increase, more restaurants were opening in the city than in previous years[23] and Douglas himself recanted his previous position as he not only didn’t have to close any restaurants but ended up opening a few new ones. There’s the California fast food CEO who, much like Douglas, thought the increase to $15 would destroy his business but now says it has provided an important boost.[24]

And rigorous research continues to show that increasing the minimum wage is good policy. A new report by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the effect of minimum wage increases in six cities – Chicago, Washington, D.C., Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle – and found stronger private sector growth than comparable economies along with no significant negative effect on employment.[25] There’s also a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau which, looking at 20 years of government- collected data, finds that raising the minimum wage increases worker earnings over the short and long-term without significant declines in employment.[26]

At the end of the day, there are simply too much data and recorded experiences showing that increasing the minimum wage works. For New Jersey to continue to delay action at this point would require ignoring what we know to be true and opting to believe rhetoric and myth over fact and rigorous research. We’ve already suffered significant setbacks, being one of the last states to emerge from the Great Recession, and our economy continues to struggle with poverty rates that are higher than they should be at this stage in our recovery. If we continue to talk about “next year” for increasing the minimum wage to $15, we’ll be left in the dust with no one to blame but ourselves yet again.

The opportunity in front of us is clear – raising the wage will benefit over a million workers, help businesses by providing them with more consumers who can purchase the services and products they offer, and improve the local economy in communities all across the state. There is no reason to hesitate any further, it is time to do what we know is both the right and smart thing to do. It’s time to pass and sign legislation that raises the minimum wage to $15 for all workers, and the time to do it is now.

 

Endnotes

[1] Economic Policy Institute analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata (2017) and CBO Economic Projections (January 2016)

[2] Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May 2018. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf

[3] NJPP Analysis of data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator

[4] The official poverty rate – 100% FPL – registers at an annual income of $24,600 for a family of four. In a high cost state like New Jersey, it makes no sense to limit real poverty to such a low level of income.200% FPL is more appropriate and registers at an annual income of $49,200 for a family of four.

[5] Economic Policy Institute, March 2018. Budgets are in 2017 dollars.

[6] National Employment Law Project, Excluding Young New Jersey Workers From A $15 Minimum Wage Is Bad Policy, September 2018. https://www.nelp.org/publication/excluding-young-new-jersey-workers-15-minimum-wage-bad-policy/

[7] National Employment Law Project analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample, 2012-2016

[8] National Employment Law Project analysis of May 2017 Occupational Employment Statistics data.

[9] Economic Policy Institute, Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change, July 2014. https://www.epi.org/publication/waiting-for-change-tipped-minimum-wage/

[10] New Jersey Policy Perspective Raising the Tipped Minimum Wage Would Increase the Economic Security of Many Hard-Working New Jerseyans, July 2014. https://www.njpp.org/reports/raising-the-tipped-minimum-wage-would-increase-the-economic-security-of-many-hard-working-new-jerseyans

[11] Restaurant Opportunities Center United, Better Wages, Better Tips: Restaurants Flourish With One Fair Wage, February 2018. http://rocunited.org/2018/02/new-report-better-wages-better-tips-restaurants-flourish-one-fair-wage/

[12] Office of the Mayor, Seattle, Washington,$15 Minimum Wage. http://murray.seattle.gov/minimumwage/#sthash.wJiTvFbp.dpbs

[13] Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles’ minimum wage on track to go up to $15 by 2020, May 2015. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-minimum-wage-hike-20150518-story.html

[14] The Sacramento Bee, Jerry Brown signs $15 minimum wage in California, April 2016. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article69842317.html

[15] New York State, Governor Cuomo Signs $15 Minimum Wage Plan and 12 Week Paid Family Leave Policy into Law, April 2016. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-signs-15-minimum-wage-plan-and-12-week-paid-family-leave-policy-law

[16] National Employment Law Project, Massachusetts Joins New York and California in Adopting $15 Minimum Wage, June 2018. https://www.nelp.org/news-releases/massachusetts-joins-new-york-california-adopting-15-minimum-wage/

[17] Agan, A. Y. and Makowsky, M. D., The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism, January 2018. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3097203

[18] Raissian, K. M., Bullinger, L. R.,Money matters: Does the minimum wage affect child maltreatment rates?, January 2017. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740916303139?via%3Dihub#!

[19] Bullinger, L. R., The Effect of Minimum Wages on Adolescent Fertility: A Nationwide Analysis, March 2017. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28103069

[20] American Public Health Association, Improving Health by Increasing the Minimum Wage, November 2016. https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2017/01/18/improving-health-by-increasing-minimum-wage

[21] Watchdog, New Jersey’s minimum-wage question poses maximum complexity, October 2013. https://www.watchdog.org/new_jersey/new-jersey-s-minimum-wage-question-poses-maximum-complexity/article_3e1f3a4a-a943-549c-8568-e5639189b72d.html

[22] NJPP analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings, New Jersey, Total Non-Farm, 2013-2015

[23] Puget Sound Business Journal, Apocalypse Not: $15 and the cuts that never came, October 2015. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-edition/2015/10/23/apocolypse-not-15-and-the-cuts-that-never-came.html

[24] KQED News, Fast Food CEO Says Higher Minimum Wage Boosts Business, January 2017. https://www.kqed.org/news/11245110/minimum-wage-goes-up-and-so-does-business-thats-what-this-fast-food-ceo-says-happened

[25] Allegretto, Godoey, Nadler and Reich, The New Wave of Local Minimum Wage Policies: Evidence from Six Cities, September 2018. http://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2018/09/The-New-Wave-of-Local-Minimum-Wage-Policies.pdf

[26] Rinz, K., Voorheis, J., The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data, March 2018. https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2018/adrm/carra-wp-2018-02.html

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