The Effect of the Health Insurance Mandate on Labor Market Activity and Time Allocation: Evidence from the Federal Dependent Coverage Provision

Otto Lenhart () and Vinish Shrestha ()
Additional contact information
Otto Lenhart: Department of Economics, Emory University
Vinish Shrestha: Department of Economics, Towson University

No 2016-10, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The primary goal of the federal dependent coverage mandate was to increase health insurance coverage among young adults, the group with the lowest prevalence of health insurance coverage. To understand the full impacts of the federal dependent coverage mandate, it is important to evaluate how the mandate affects labor market activities and time spent away from work among young adults. Using data from the Consumer Population Survey (CPS) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and implementing a difference-in-differences framework, we find: 1) Young adults substitute employer sponsored insurance for dependent coverage, 2) Affected individuals reduce their work time and switch from full- to part-time employment, and 3) The additional time from reduced labor market activity is reallocated towards more time spent on leisure activities. The effects of the mandate on labor market activities are stronger in later years. Furthermore, we show that young adults do not increase the time they spend on activities that could enhance their human capital such as education and health, which reemphasizes potential unintended consequences of the mandate. These findings suggest that future work is necessary to fully understand the overall welfare effects of the policy.

Keywords: Dependent coverage mandate; labor market outcomes; time use. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2016-04, Revised 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://webapps.towson.edu/cbe/economics/workingpapers/2016-10.pdf First version, 2016 (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:tow:wpaper:2016-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Juergen Jung ().