While minimum wage policies are widely implemented to improve workers’ welfare, their effects on household food security remain underexplored. This study examines the role of district-level minimum wages in shaping household food security in Indonesia, focusing on Java Island. We employ unconditional quantile regression with recentered influence functions to capture distributional effects across different types of households. To address omitted variable bias of minimum wages, we apply a modified two-way fixed effects model incorporating district fixed effects and district-pair-year fixed effects to account for structural differences and shared regional economic shocks. Using annual household data from the Susenas, we assess two dimensions of food security: access to food, proxied by per capita food expenditure, and food utilisation, measured by per capita daily consumption of calories, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The estimation results indicate that increases in minimum wages have not been effective in improving households’ access to food or food utilisation. The observed increase in food expenditure primarily reflects rising prices of calories and macronutrients rather than an improvement in dietary quality. The modest gains in fat intake are largely driven by a reduction in protein consumption. The situation for poor households is even severe because, although some adjust their nutrient allocation, protein consumption declines in other households. However, this is likely a matter of choice. Poor households have the flexibility to reduce their non-food expenditures, but they choose not to. These findings imply that raising and refining minimum wage policies alone is insufficient to strengthen food security. Additional interventions integrated with minimum wage policies, such as the provision of food vouchers, are highly recommended.

Suggested Citation:

Satyadharma, J.F., Sulistyaningrum, E. Solution or illusion? The distributional impact of minimum wage on household food security in Java, Indonesia. Food Sec. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-026-01719-9