Household Demand for Health Insurance: Price and Spouse's Coverage

Marjorie Honig () and Irena Dushi
Additional contact information
Marjorie Honig: Hunter College, Department of Economics
Irena Dushi: International Longevity Center-USA

No 411, Economics Working Paper Archive at Hunter College from Hunter College Department of Economics

Abstract: Demand for employment-based insurance is typically treated as an individual rather than a household decision. Dual-earner households are now the modal U.S. married household, however, and most firms offer family coverage as an option available to employees. Findings from a model estimating married workers' take-up of their own insurance with their own and their spouses' offers indicate that both own price and potential coverage under spouses' plans are important determinants of take-up. We find evidence of selection into jobs offering insurance among wives but not husbands. Findings also suggest that dual-earners are not aware of the potential wage/benefit trade-off. Data are from the 1996 panel of SIPP.

JEL-codes: J10 J12 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2005
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://econ.hunter.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sit ... /HunterEconWP411.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:htr:hcecon:411

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Archive at Hunter College from Hunter College Department of Economics 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Conning ().