Decades of research have been conducted on the topic of the minimum wage, which portrays how low income affects the quality of life for minimum wage earners and their families. The components associated with the quality of life in this dissertation refer to higher education, individual skills or work experience, public housing, health care, public assistance and social behaviors. (Smith, 2015) During the 1960s, the federal government implemented two legislations, the Economic Opportunity Act and Civil Rights Act, which were established to combat the war on poverty and improve the livelihood of low income families (The Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). However, low wages are only one part of the legislation that do not work as
