This study compared school construction costs before and after legislative changes to prevailing wage laws in West Virginia. The study uses data provided by the School Building Authority of West Virginia (SBA). The data suggests that school construction costs increased in the years prior to the legislative changes and decreased after. Comparing projects bid with and without prevailing wages since 2013 suggests construction costs per square foot decreased by 7.3 percent since the removal of the wage requirement. However, the magnitude of the decrease depends on the time-period examined and the individual schools included in the analysis. States that border West Virginia did not experience similar decreases in the costs of school construction during this time
