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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Effect Of Health Insurance On Workers' Compensation Filing: Evidence From The Affordable Care Act's Age-Based Threshold For Dependent Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender
The Effect Of Health Insurance On Workers' Compensation Filing: Evidence From The Affordable Care Act's Age-Based Threshold For Dependent Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper identifies the effect of health insurance on workers' compensation (WC) filing for young adults by implementing a regression discontinuity design using WC medical claims data from Texas. The results suggest health insurance factors into the decision to have WC pay for discretionary care. The implied instrumental variables estimates suggest a 10 percentage point decrease in health insurance coverage increases WC bills by 15.3 percent. Despite the large impact of health insurance on the number of WC bills, the additional cost to WC at age 26 appears to be small as most of the increase comes from small bills.
The Effect Of Medicare Eligibility On Spousal Insurance Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender, Karen Mulligan
The Effect Of Medicare Eligibility On Spousal Insurance Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender, Karen Mulligan
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
A majority of married couples in the United States take advantage of the fact that employers often provide health insurance coverage to spouses. When the older spouses become eligible for Medicare, however, many of them can no longer provide their younger spouses with coverage. In this paper, we study how spousal eligibility for Medicare affects the health insurance and health care access of the younger spouse. We find spousal eligibility for Medicare results in the younger spouse having worse insurance coverage and reduced access to health care services.
Mandate-Based Health Reform And The Labor Market: Evidence From The Massachusetts Reform, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Amanda E. Kowalski
Mandate-Based Health Reform And The Labor Market: Evidence From The Massachusetts Reform, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Amanda E. Kowalski
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We model the labor market impact of the key provisions of the national and Massachusetts "mandate-based" health reforms: individual mandates, employer mandates, and subsidies. We characterize the compensating differential for employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) and the welfare impact of reform in terms of "sufficient statistics." We compare welfare under mandate-based reform to welfare in a counterfactual world where individuals do not value ESHI. Relying on the Massachusetts reform, we find that jobs with ESHI pay $2,812 less annually, somewhat less than the cost of ESHI to employers. Accordingly, the deadweight loss of mandate-based health reform was approximately 8 percent of …
Medicaid And The Labor Supply Of Single Mothers: Implications For Health Care Reform, Vincent Pohl
Medicaid And The Labor Supply Of Single Mothers: Implications For Health Care Reform, Vincent Pohl
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid and introduces health insurance subsidies, thereby changing work incentives for single mothers. To undertake an ex ante policy evaluation of the employment effects of the PPACA, I structurally estimate a model of labor supply and health insurance choice exploiting existing variation in Medicaid policies. Simulations show that single mothers increase their labor supply at the extensive and the intensive margin by six and five percent, respectively. The PPACA leads to crowding-out of employer-sponsored health insurance of about 40 percent and increases single mothers' welfare by about $190 per month.
The Effect Of Public Insurance Coverage For Childless Adults On Labor Supply, Laura Dague, Thomas C. Deleire, Lindsey Leininger
The Effect Of Public Insurance Coverage For Childless Adults On Labor Supply, Laura Dague, Thomas C. Deleire, Lindsey Leininger
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This study provides plausibly causal estimates of the effect of public insurance coverage on the employment of nonelderly, nondisabled adults without dependent children (“childless adults”). We use regression discontinuity and propensity score matching difference-in-differences methods to take advantage of the sudden imposition of an enrollment cap, comparing the labor supply of enrollees to eligible applicants on a waitlist. We find that enrollment into public insurance leads to sizable and statistically meaningful reductions in employment up to at least nine quarters later, with an estimated size of 2–10 percentage points, depending on the model used.
Retiree Health Benefits As Deferred Compensation: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, James Marton, Stephen A. Woodbury
Retiree Health Benefits As Deferred Compensation: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, James Marton, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Are early retiree health benefits (RHBs) a form of deferred compensation that binds workers to an employer? Most employers who offer RHBs offer them only to workers who have 10 or more years of tenure with the firm and have reached age 55. Accordingly, workers in firms offering RHBs have an incentive to stay with a firm in the years before they attain eligibility for RHBs, and a greater incentive than otherwise to retire thereafter. We test for the existence of such a pattern of incentives by examining the age-specific relationship between workers’ eligibility for RHBs and retirement. The findings …
The Efficiency Of A Group-Specific Mandated Benefit Revisited: The Effect Of Infertility Mandates, Joanna N. Lahey
The Efficiency Of A Group-Specific Mandated Benefit Revisited: The Effect Of Infertility Mandates, Joanna N. Lahey
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper examines the labor market effects of state health insurance mandates that increase the cost of employing a demographically identifiable group. State mandates requiring that health insurance plans cover infertility treatment raise the relative cost of insuring older women of child-bearing age. Empirically, wages in this group are unaffected, but their total labor input decreases. Workers do not value infertility mandates at cost, and so will not take wage cuts in exchange, leading employers to decrease their demand for this affected and identifiable group. Differences in the empirical effects of mandates found in the literature are explained by a …
Employer-Provided Health Insurance And Labor Supply Of Married Women, Merve Cebi
Employer-Provided Health Insurance And Labor Supply Of Married Women, Merve Cebi
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This work presents new evidence on the effect of husbands’ health insurance on wives’ labor supply. Previous cross-sectional studies have estimated a significant negative effect of spousal coverage on wives’ labor supply. However, these estimates potentially suffer from bias due to the simultaneity of wives’ labor supply and the health insurance status of their husbands. This paper attempts to obtain consistent estimates by using several panel data methods. In particular, the likely correlation between unobserved personal characteristics of husbands and wives—such as preferences for work—and potential joint job choice decisions can be controlled by using panel data on intact marriages. …
Health Insurance Availability And Entrepreneurship, Philip Decicca
Health Insurance Availability And Entrepreneurship, Philip Decicca
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Despite a strong interest in entrepreneurship, economists have devoted little attention to the role of health insurance availability. I investigate the impact of a unique policy experiment—New Jersey’s Individual Health Coverage Plan—on self-employment. Implemented in August 1993, the IHCP included an extensive set of reforms that loosened the historical connection between traditional employment and health insurance by facilitating access to coverage that was not employer-linked. I find evidence that the IHCP increased self-employment among New Jersey residents, relative to various sets of comparison states. Consistent with key policy features, including pure community rating of premiums, I find larger behavioral responses …
Refundable Tax Credits For Health Insurance: The Sensitivity Of Simulated Impacts To Assumed Behavior, David W. Emmons, Eva Madly, Stephen A. Woodbury
Refundable Tax Credits For Health Insurance: The Sensitivity Of Simulated Impacts To Assumed Behavior, David W. Emmons, Eva Madly, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We replicate and extend a simulation model developed by Jonathan Gruber with the goals of illuminating Gruber's modeling of health insurance coverage under a tax credit and examining the sensitivity of the results to changes in the model's key parameters. The replications suggest that a refundable tax credit of $1,000 for a single individual or $2,000 for a family for private health insurance would reduce the number of uninsured individuals by between 17.5 and 28 percent and require new government expenditures of between $16.6 and $44 billion, of which about $7.4-$9.7 billion would be for coverage of previously uninsured individuals. …
The Benefits Implications Of Recent Trends In Flexible Staff Arrangements, Susan N. Houseman
The Benefits Implications Of Recent Trends In Flexible Staff Arrangements, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Workers in flexible staffing arrangements - including temporary agency, direct-hire temporary, on-call, and contract workers - are much less likely than regular, direct-hire employees to be covered by laws mandating or regulating workplace benefits. Workers in such arrangements, in turn, are much less likely to receive pension, health insurance, and other benefits on the job. This paper documents these differences in coverage by benefits regulations and differences in benefits receipt. The paper also reviews evidence on the incentives employers have to use workers in these various flexible staffing arrangements. Although reducing benefits costs is not the only reason employers use …
Why Employers Use Flexible Staffing Arrangements: Evidence From An Establishment Survey, Susan N. Houseman
Why Employers Use Flexible Staffing Arrangements: Evidence From An Establishment Survey, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper examines which employers use flexible staffing arrangements, why they use these arrangements, and their implications for workers and public policy, drawing on a nationally representative survey of private sector establishments. Use of flexible staffing arrangements-including temporary help agency, short-term, on-call, regular part-time, and contract workers-is widespread and two-thirds of employers believe this use will increase in the near future. Traditional reasons concerning the need to accommodate fluctuations in workload or absences in staff are the most commonly cited reasons for using all types of flexible staffing arrangements. Many employers also use agency temporaries and part-time workers to screen …
Employee Benefits And Tax Reform, Stephen A. Woodbury
Employee Benefits And Tax Reform, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The current tax treatment of pensions and health insurance in the United States is a hybrid that lacks consistency under either an accrual income tax system or a consumption tax system. Under an accrual income tax, employer contributions to pension plans represent an addition to wealth that would be taxed at the time they are made. The interest earned on pension contributions also represents an addition to wealth that would be taxed annually. When a worker retires, all applicable taxes would already have been paid on the benefit, and the flow of retirement income received by the worker would not …