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LivingWages & Communities: Smarter Economic Development, LowerThan Expected Costs Relationship to Other Research As the first comprehensive overview of the direct experiences of a group of cities and counties with liv- ing wage laws, this report adds to our understanding of the effects of these policies. Our �ndings that living wage laws have resulted in only modest cost increases for cities are consistent with most of the existing research on living wages. Studies conducted prior to the adoption of living wage laws have projected their likely cost impacts on both the payrolls of city contractors and on prices for city contracts. Most have predicted S ia r only a portion of the higher wage costs would he passed on to cities in the form of higher contract E: • itt k' As more living wage laws have been enacted, researchers have ��gun to use actual city contracting and budget data to assess the impact of living wage laws in individual cities after their implementation. Several studies analyzing city contract prices relatively shortly after Eiving wage laws were adopted found that cost increases were generally modest." More comprehensive recent research analyzing contract costs in three cities several years after living wages were implemented found that contract costs decreased in real terms in the aggregate, although some individual contracts increased in price, particularly those that were bid on an hourly basis and that involved large concentrations of low-wage worlcers! One recent study attempted to assess �ndix�ctly the impact of living wage laws on local economies by loolcing for trends in regional poverty and employment data in cities with living wage laws.g However, because only a tiny percentage of workers covered by living wage laws are included in those regional data sets, the study's approach and findings have been called into question by other researchers.�