Are the costs of employer-sponsored health insurance passed on to workers at the individual level?

Conor Lennon

Economics & Human Biology, 2021, vol. 41, issue C

Abstract: Because employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is experience rated, employers have an incentive to try to offset its cost by paying lower wages to employees who have greater medical expenditures. The existing evidence on this topic, however, illustrates only that ESI is associated with lower wages for groups of workers who are costlier to cover. In contrast, I use the variation provided by the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate to examine if differences in medical expenditures are passed on to workers at the individual level. My estimates rely on Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data in a dose response difference-in-difference framework that examines how wages change for workers with varying medical expenditures when they must soon be offered ESI. I find that each $1 difference in medical expenditures is associated with a $0.35 to $0.51 wage offset after the employer mandate's announcement wherever ESI must soon be offered to workers. Placebo analyses, focusing on workers whose employers are not affected by the mandate, provide support for a causal interpretation. I also show that my findings are not sensitive to sample selection or data reliability issues and that they cannot be explained by the effects of the Great Recession, demographic characteristics that correlate with medical expenditures, or location- or industry-specific idiosyncratic shocks.

Keywords: Wages; Medical expenditures; Employer-sponsored health insurance; ESI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 J23 J24 J31 J32 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:41:y:2021:i:c:s1570677x21000198

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2021.100995

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