Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment
dc.contributor.author | Baicker, Katherine | en_US |
dc.contributor.author | Levy, Helen | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2010-06-01T19:58:13Z | |
dc.date.available | 2010-06-01T19:58:13Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2008-03 | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | Baicker, Katherine; Levy, Helen (2008). " Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment ." Risk Management and Insurance Review 11(1): 109-132. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/73099> | en_US |
dc.identifier.issn | 1098-1616 | en_US |
dc.identifier.issn | 1540-6296 | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/73099 | |
dc.description.abstract | Employer health insurance mandates form the basis of many health care reform proposals. Proponents make the case that they will increase insurance, while opponents raise the concern that low-wage workers will see offsetting reductions in their wages and that in the presence of minimum wage laws some of the lowest wage workers will become unemployed. We construct an estimate of the number of workers whose wages are so close to the minimum wage that they cannot be lowered to absorb the cost of health insurance, using detailed data on wages, health insurance, and demographics from the Current Population Survey (CPS). We find that 33 percent of uninsured workers earn within $3 of the minimum wage, putting them at risk of unemployment if their employers were required to offer insurance. Assuming an elasticity of employment with respect to minimum wage increase of -0.10, we estimate that 0.2 percent of all full-time workers and 1.4 percent of uninsured full-time workers would lose their jobs because of a health insurance mandate. Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female. This risk of unemployment should be a crucial component in the evaluation of both the effectiveness and distributional implications of these policies relative to alternatives such as tax credits, Medicaid expansions, and individual mandates, and their broader effects on the well-being of low-wage workers. | en_US |
dc.format.extent | 263208 bytes | |
dc.format.extent | 3109 bytes | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.format.mimetype | text/plain | |
dc.publisher | Blackwell Publishing Inc | en_US |
dc.rights | The American Risk and Insurance Reivew, 2008 | en_US |
dc.title | Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevel | Economics | en_US |
dc.subject.hlbtoplevel | Business | en_US |
dc.description.peerreviewed | Peer Reviewed | en_US |
dc.contributor.affiliationum | Katherine Baicker is professor of Health Economics, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115; e-mail: kbaicker@hsph.harvard.edu . Helen Levy works with the University of Michigan, Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, 555 S. Forest Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; phone: (734) 615-9587; e-mail: hlevy@uminch.edu . We are grateful to participants at the conference “Healthcare Reform: The Economics of Pay-or-Play Mandates” (Washington, D.C., September 14, 2007), especially Jared Bernstein and Elise Gould for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support of an earlier version of this work from the Employment Policies Institute is gratefully acknowledged. | en_US |
dc.description.bitstreamurl | http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73099/1/j.1540-6296.2008.00133.x.pdf | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1111/j.1540-6296.2008.00133.x | en_US |
dc.identifier.source | Risk Management and Insurance Review | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medial Expenditure Panel Survey—Insurance Component, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1999–2005. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Baicker, K., and A. Chandra, 2006, The Labor Market Effects of Rising Health Insurance Premiums, Journal of Labor Economics, 24 ( 3 ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Brown, C., 1999, Minimum Wages, Employment, and the Distribution of Income in: O. Ashenfelter and D. Card eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, 3B ( Holland: Elsevier Science ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006, Current Employment Statistics, U. S. Department of Labor. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | California Health Care Foundation, 2004, State Employer Health Insurance Mandates: A Brief History, http://www.chcf.org/documents//EmployerInsuranceMandates.pdf ( accessed October 31, 2004 ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Chernew, M., K. Frick, and C. McLaughlin, 1997, The Demand for Health Insurance Coverage by Low-Income Workers: Can Reduced Premiums Achieve Full Coverage ? Health Services Research. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Chollet, D., 1987, Public Policy Options to Expand Health Insurance Coverage Among the Nonelderly Population, In Government Mandating of Employee Benefits, Employee Benefits Research Institute, http://www.ebri.org/books/govmand.htm ( accessed October 31, 2004 ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Currie, J., and B. C. Madrian, 2000, Health, Health Insurance and the Labor Market, in: O. Ashenfelter and D. Card eds., The Handbook of Labor Economics, 3 C ( Holland: Elsevier Science ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Fiscal Policy Institute, 2004, State Minimum Wages and Employment in Small Businesses, http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/minimumwageandsmallbusiness.pdf ( accessed October 31, 2004 ). | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Fishback, P., and S. E. Kantor, 1995, Did Workers Gain From the Passage of Workers' Compensation Laws ? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110: 713 – 742. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Fitzpatrick, J. J., 2005, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Fitzpatrick, J. J., 2006, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Fitzpatrick, J. J., 2007, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Gruber, J., 1994, The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits, American Economic Review, 622 – 641. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Gruber, J., and A. Krueger, 1991, The Incidence of Mandated Employer—Provided Insurance: Lessons from Workers' Compensation Insurance, in: D. Bradford ed., Tax Policy and the Economy, vol. 5 ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press ), pp. 111 – 144. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Gruber, J., and E. Washington, 2003, Subsidies to Employee Health Insurance Premiums and the Health Insurance Market, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 9567. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Kaiser/HRET, Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits, Various years. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Krueger and Reinhardt, 1994, The Economics of Employer Versus Individual Mandates, Health Affairs, Spring. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Madrian, B. C., and L. J. Lefgren, 2000, An Approach to Longitudinally Matching Population Survey (CPS) Respondents, Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 26 ( 1 ): 31 – 62. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Nelson, R., 2000, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Nelson, R., 2001, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Nelson, R., 2002, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Nelson, R., 2003, State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Nelson, R., and J. J. Fitzpatrick, 2004 State Labor Legislation Enacted, Monthly Labor Review, January. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Olson, C., 2002, Do Workers Accept Lower Wages in Exchange for Health Benefits ? Journal of Labor Economics, 20 ( 2 ): S91 – S114. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Porter, E., 2004, Rising Cost of Health Benefits Cited as Factor in Slump of Jobs, New York Times, August 19. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Schwabisch, J. A., 2004, Accounting for Wages and Benefits Using the ECI, Monthly Labor Review, September: 26 – 41. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Summers, L. H., May 1989, Some Simple Economics of Mandated Benefits, American Economic Review, 177 – 183. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Swartz, K., 1986, Interpreting the Estimates From Four National Surveys of the Number of People Without Health Insurance, Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 14: 233 – 242. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Thurston, N., 1997, Labor Market Effects of Hawaii's Mandatory Employer-Provided Health Insurance, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, October. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | United States Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, various years. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | United States Department of Labor, 2007, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Publication, September: 07 – 1434. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Yelowitz, A., 2003, The Cost of California's Health Insurance Act of 2003, Employment Policies Institute. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Yelowitz, A., 2004, The Economic Impact of Proposition 72 on California Employers, Employment Policies Institute. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citedreference | Zedlewski, S., G. Acs, and C. Winterbottom, 2002, Play-or-Pay Employer Mandates: Potential Effects, Health Affairs, Spring. | en_US |
dc.owningcollname | Interdisciplinary and Peer-Reviewed |
Files in this item
Remediation of Harmful Language
The University of Michigan Library aims to describe library materials in a way that respects the people and communities who create, use, and are represented in our collections. Report harmful or offensive language in catalog records, finding aids, or elsewhere in our collections anonymously through our metadata feedback form. More information at Remediation of Harmful Language.
Accessibility
If you are unable to use this file in its current format, please select the Contact Us link and we can modify it to make it more accessible to you.