Does health reform affect self-employment? Evidence from Massachusetts

Bradley Heim and Ithai Lurie ()

Small Business Economics, 2014, vol. 43, issue 4, 917-930

Abstract: This paper evaluates whether the implementation of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law affected the decision of taxpayers to be self-employed, using both difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods on a panel of tax returns that spans 1999–2010. Though tenuous, our results suggest that the reform led to a decline in the rate of taxpayers earning a majority of income from self-employment. In addition, it appears to have had a positive impact on earning some self-employment income among joint filers and earning the majority of income from self-employment among older taxpayers, but these were offset by negative impacts on single filers and taxpayers age 35–49. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA) 2014

Keywords: Self-employment; Health reform; Health insurance; L26; I18; I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-014-9572-6

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