Does the Availability of Parental Health Insurance Affect the College Enrollment Decision of Young Americans?

Diane Harnek Hall (), Juergen Jung and Thomas Rhoads
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Diane Harnek Hall: Department of Family Studies and Community Development, Towson University

No 2010-05, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The present study examines whether the college enrollment decision of young individuals (student full-time, student part-time, non-student) depends on the availability of health insurance from their parents. Our findings indicate that the availability of parental health insurance has strong significant effects on the probability that a young individual enrolls as a full-time student. A young individual who has access to health insurance via a parent is up to 20.5 percent more likely to enroll as a full-time student than an individual without parental health insurance. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity this probablity drops to 5.7 percent but is still highly significant. We also find that the marginal effect of the availability of parental health insurance has a larger effect on older students between age 21-23. We provide a brief discussion about possible implications of the Affordable Care Act 2010 in this context.

Keywords: Occupational choice; health insurance; educational choice; survey of income and program participation (SIPP). (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 I10 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2010-02, Revised 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://webapps.towson.edu/cbe/economics/workingpapers/2010-05.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does the availability of parental health insurance affect the college enrollment decision of young Americans? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tow:wpaper:2010-05

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