Heterogeneous Impacts of ACA-Medicaid Expansion on Insurance and Labor Market Outcomes in the American South

Vinish Shrestha ()
Additional contact information
Vinish Shrestha: Department of Economics, Towson University

No 2024-08, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The expansion of Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act (ACA-Medicaid) has sparked debates on its impact on local labor markets. This study delves into the heterogeneous im- pacts of ACA-Medicaid expansion on insurance and labor market outcomes in the American South. Utilizing the modified version of Causal Forest approach, the research uncovers significant heterogeneity in treatment effects. Notably, counties ranking within the top 10 percent based on the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) estimates exhibit a reduction in the unin- sured rate by approximately 13 percentage points more than the average during the year of the reform. Moreover, the estimated heterogeneity suggest evidence of increased unemployment rates, decreased total employment, and a contraction of labor force in the years following the expansion. Such effects are particularly concentrated in food/accommodation and retail/trade sectors. These findings offer insights for refining and optimizing healthcare reform strategies.

Keywords: Medicaid expansion; Labor market outcomes; Heterogeneous effects; Conditional average treatment effect (CATE); Causal Forests (CF); Causal Machine Learning. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 C19 I10 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2024-06, Revised 2024-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://webapps.towson.edu/cbe/economics/workingpapers/2024-08.pdf First version, 2024 (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:2024-08

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 ().