The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession

John Cawley, Asako S. Moriya () and Kosali Simon
Additional contact information
Asako S. Moriya: Carnegie Mellon University

No 6124, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-09. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a 1.67 percentage point (2.12%) reduction in the probability that men have health insurance; this effect is strongest among college-educated, white, and older (50-64 year old) men. We estimate that 9.3 million Americans, the vast majority of whom were adult men, lost health insurance due to a higher unemployment rate alone during the 2007-09 recession. We conclude with a discussion of how components of recent health care reform may influence this relationship in the future.

Keywords: health insurance; recession; unemployment; Medicaid; SCHIP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 I10 J3 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published - published in: Health Economics, 2015, 24 (2), 206 - 223

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6124.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession (2015)
Working Paper: The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession (2011)
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:iza:izadps:dp6124

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().