Hiking the minimum wage for low-paid care workers has a “rather worrying deterioration in the quality of care”, according to a new study. Care homes have responded to the introduction of the National Living Wage by cutting costs.  They have not reduced the number of workers in homes or cut their hours, as was feared before the pay rise was introduced. Nor have they raised fees, as local authority regulations in particular make this hard to do. … “Our empirical results uncover a worsening of care services in all five of these areas in those care homes where the National Living Wage bit hardest,” said Giulia Giupponi and Stephen Machin at the university’s Centre for Economic Performance.