The Self-Employed are Less Likely to Have Health Insurance Than Wage Earners. So What?

Craig William Perry and Harvey Rosen ()

No 8316, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: There is considerable public policy concern over the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the United States. Presumably, the reason for the concern is that their low rates of insurance lead to worse health outcomes. We use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey conducted in 1996 to analyze how the self-employed and wage-earners differ with respect to insurance coverage and health status. Using a variety of ways to measure health status, we find that the relative lack of health insurance among the self-employed does not affect their health. For virtually every subjective and objective measure of health status, the self-employed and wage earners are statistically indistinguishable from each other. Further, we present some evidence that this phenomenon is not due to the fact that individuals who select into self-employment are healthier than wage-earners, ceteris paribus. Thus, the public policy concern with the relative lack of health insurance among the self-employed may be somewhat misplaced.

JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
Note: EH PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published as Holtz-Eakin, Douglas and Harvey S. Rosen (eds.) Entrepreneurship and Public Policy. MIT Press, 2004.

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