The Impact of Health Insurance on Stockholding: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Dimitris Christelis, Dimitris Georgarakos and Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study, we study the causal effect of increased health insurance coverage through Medicare and the associated reduction in health-related background risk on financial risk-taking. Given the onset of Medicare at age 65, we identify our effect of interest using a regression discontinuity approach. We find that getting Medicare coverage induces stockholding for those with at least some college education, but not for their less-educated counterparts. Hence, our results indicate that a reduction in background risk induces financial risk-taking in individuals for whom informational and pecuniary stock market participation costs are relatively low.

Keywords: Health Insurance; Medicare; Stockholding; Regression Discontinuity; Household Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 G11 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp382.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of health insurance on stockholding: A regression discontinuity approach (2020)
Working Paper: The Impact of Health Insurance on Stockholding: A Regression Discontinuity Approach (2014)
Working Paper: The impact of health insurance on stockholding: A regression discontinuity approach (2014)
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:sef:csefwp:382

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Maria Carannante ().