On Tuesday, voters in Arizona will consider an initiative to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $6.75 per hour, with a provision that the state minimum wage would automatically increase to keep up with inflation rates. A report released this week by the Center for American Progress, details the extraordinary effects this initiative could have on individuals and families in Arizona.

As the report notes:

…in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, the federal minimum wage has fallen by nearly 40 percent between 1968 and the present. By contrast, average productivity per worker in the U.S. rose by more than 90 percent between 1968 and 2005.

If a breadwinner earns minimum wage and is employed full-time, she would currently make $10,712 a year – for a family of three, that’s 32% below the poverty line.

The report finds that 345,000 workers – or 13% of working Arizonans – will benefit from the proposed increase, and when including their families, over 1 million benefit.

As important, the report finds that the raise in the minimum wage will not overburden businesses:

The total costs of these wage increases to private businesses in Arizona will be about $312 million a year. … The average business in Arizona would therefore have to increase its revenues by less than 1/10th of one percent to fully cover the costs of the minimum wage increase to $6.75. Because these overall cost increases will be such a small proportion of sales to businesses, we conclude that these costs can be readily absorbed by the businesses and consumers, primarily through very small price increases.