Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 23 of 23
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Labor Market Effects Of Paid Sick Leave: The Case Of Seattle, Hilary Wething, Meredith Slopen
Labor Market Effects Of Paid Sick Leave: The Case Of Seattle, Hilary Wething, Meredith Slopen
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We investigate the impact of Seattle’s Paid Sick and Safety Time (PSST) policy on workers’ quarterly hours worked and separation hazard. Using Unemployment Insurance records from before and after the implementation of PSST, we examine individual-level employment behavior at the extensive and intensive margins and compare Seattle workers to workers in Washington state using a difference-in-differences strategy. Importantly, we consider how impacts vary by employment characteristics, including worker wage rate and tenure, and by firm characteristics, including industry and firm size. We find that PSST increased workers’ quarterly hours by 4.42 hours per quarter, or around 18 hours per year. …
General Equilibrium Effects Of Insurance Expansions: Evidence From Long-Term Care Labor Markets, Martin Hackmann, Joerg Heining, Roman Klimke, Maria Polyakova, Holger Seibert
General Equilibrium Effects Of Insurance Expansions: Evidence From Long-Term Care Labor Markets, Martin Hackmann, Joerg Heining, Roman Klimke, Maria Polyakova, Holger Seibert
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Arrow (1963) hypothesized that demand-side moral hazard induced by health insurance leads to supply-side expansions in healthcare markets. Capturing these effects empirically has been challenging, as non-marginal insurance expansions are rare and detailed data on healthcare labor and capital is sparse. We combine administrative labor market data with the geographic variation in the rollout of a universal insurance program—the introduction of long-term care (LTC) insurance in Germany in 1995—to document a substantial expansion of the inpatient LTC labor market in response to insurance expansion. A 10 percentage point expansion in the share of insured elderly leads to 0.05 (7%) more …
[Job] Locked And [Un]Loaded: The Effect Of The Affordable Care Act Dependency Mandate On Reenlistment In The U.S. Army, Michael S. Kofoed, Wyatt J. Frasier
[Job] Locked And [Un]Loaded: The Effect Of The Affordable Care Act Dependency Mandate On Reenlistment In The U.S. Army, Michael S. Kofoed, Wyatt J. Frasier
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
One concern with employer-based health insurance is job lock or the inability for employees to leave their current employment for better opportunities for fear of losing benefits. We use the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s dependency mandate as a natural experiment. Data from the United States Army overcome some limitations in previous studies including the ability to examine workers with fixed contract expiration dates, uniform pay, and health coverage. We find that the ACA decreased reenlistment rates by 3.13 percent for enlisted soldiers aged 23–25. We also find that younger veterans who leave the army are more likely to …
The Effect Of Paid Sick Leave Mandates On Access To Paid Leave And Work Absences, Kevin Callison, Michael F. Pesko
The Effect Of Paid Sick Leave Mandates On Access To Paid Leave And Work Absences, Kevin Callison, Michael F. Pesko
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We evaluate the impact of paid sick leave (PSL) mandates on access to PSL and work absences for private sector workers in the U.S. By exploiting geographic and temporal variation in PSL mandate enactment, we compare changes in outcomes for workers in counties affected by a PSL mandate to changes for those in counties with no mandate. Additionally, we rely on within-county variation in the propensity to gain PSL following a mandate to estimate policy effects for workers most likely to acquire coverage. Results indicate that PSL mandates lead to increased access to PSL benefits, especially for women and those …
Does Increased Access To Health Insurance Impact Claims For Workers' Compensation? Evidence From Massachusetts Health Care Reform, Erin Todd Bronchetti, Melissa Mcinerney
Does Increased Access To Health Insurance Impact Claims For Workers' Compensation? Evidence From Massachusetts Health Care Reform, Erin Todd Bronchetti, Melissa Mcinerney
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We study over 20 million emergency room (ER) discharges in Massachusetts and three comparison states to estimate the impact of Massachusetts health care reform on claims for Workers’ Compensation (WC). Prior evidence on the relationship between health insurance and WC claiming behavior is mixed. We find that the reform caused a significant decrease in the number of per-capita ER discharges billed to WC. This result is driven by larger decreases in WC discharges for conditions for which there is greater scope to change the payer or the location of care. Conversely, we estimate smaller impacts for weekend versus weekday admissions …
Medicaid, Family Spending, And The Financial Implications Of Crowd-Out, Marcus O. Dillender
Medicaid, Family Spending, And The Financial Implications Of Crowd-Out, Marcus O. Dillender
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
A primary purpose of health insurance is to protect families from medical expenditure risk. Despite this goal and despite the fact that research has found that Medicaid can crowd out private coverage, little is known about the effect of Medicaid on families' spending patterns. This paper implements a simulated instrumental variables strategy with data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to estimate the effect of an additional family member becoming eligible from Medicaid on family-level health insurance coverage and spending. The results indicate that an additional family member becoming eligible for Medicaid increases the number of people in the family with …
Effects Of The Affordable Care Act On Part-Time Employment: Early Evidence, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman (Corresponding Author)
Effects Of The Affordable Care Act On Part-Time Employment: Early Evidence, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman (Corresponding Author)
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires employers with at least 50 full-time-equivalent employees to offer “affordable” health insurance to employees working 30 or more hours per week. If employers do not comply with the mandate, they may face substantial financial penalties. Employers can potentially circumvent the mandate by reducing weekly hours below the 30-hour threshold or by using other nonstandard employment arrangements (direct-hire temporaries, agency temporaries, small contractors, and independent contractors). We examine the effects of the ACA on short-hours, part-time employment. Using monthly CPS data, we estimate that the ACA resulted in an increase in low-hours, involuntary part-time employment …
Eligibility Recertification And Dynamic Opt-In Incentives In Income-Tested Social Programs: Evidence From Medicaid/Chip, Zhuan Pei
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Conventional labor supply studies assume constant eligibility monitoring of income-tested program participants, but this is not true for most programs. For example, states can allow children to enroll in Medicaid/CHIP for 12 months regardless of family income changes. A long recertification period reduces monitoring costs but is predicted to induce program participation by temporary income adjustments. However, I find little evidence of strategic behavior from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation. Given the lack of dynamic responses, I propose a framework to compute the optimal recertification period and find 12 months to be its lower bound.
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 Potential Effects Of Federal Health Insurance Reforms On Employment Arrangements And Compensation, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman
The Potential Effects Of Federal Health Insurance Reforms On Employment Arrangements And Compensation, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) presents an opportunity to significantly improve compensation for American workers. A potential concern, though, is that employers will circumvent the employer mandate by increasing their use of workers in staffing arrangements that are not covered by the mandate: workers averaging less than 30 hours per week, working on a temporary basis, or working in organizations with fewer than 50 full-time employees. In this paper, we shed light on the likely effects that the ACA will have on employment arrangements. We first examine how part-time employment in Massachusetts changed after its health insurance reform, which is …
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 …
Health Insurance Tax Credits And Health Insurance Coverage Of Low-Earning Single Mothers, Merve Cebi, Stephen A. Woodbury
Health Insurance Tax Credits And Health Insurance Coverage Of Low-Earning Single Mothers, Merve Cebi, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
No abstract provided.
The Influence Of Retiree Health Benefits On Retirement Patterns, James Marton, Stephen A. Woodbury
The Influence Of Retiree Health Benefits On Retirement Patterns, James Marton, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We estimate the effect of employer offers of retiree health benefits (RHBs) on the timing of retirement using a sample of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) men observed over a period of up to 12 years. We hypothesize that the effect of RHBs differs for workers of different ages-a hypothesis we can test now that the main HRS cohort has aged sufficiently. We apply three well-known panel data estimators and find that, for men in their 50s, RHBs have little or no effect on retirement decisions; however, a substantial effect emerges for men in their early 60s. We use simulations …
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. …
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 …
Reducing The Welfare Dependence Of Single-Mother Families: Health-Related Employment Barriers And Policy Responses, Jean Kimmel
Reducing The Welfare Dependence Of Single-Mother Families: Health-Related Employment Barriers And Policy Responses, Jean Kimmel
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The problem of rising health care costs and the related increased dependency on health insurance coverage has moved to the forefront of the U.S. policy agenda in recent years and was a fundamental component of President Clinton's 1992 campaign platform. However, the President's 1994 health care reform proposal was unsuccessful, and current GOP proposals to cut the rate of growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending while the eligible population and costs both continue to grow fail to address the problem of coverage. In fact, one likely side effect of the cost-shifting to private insurance carriers will be to increase the …