دانلود رایگان مقاله اثرات بازار کار همسر از بیمه درمانی دولت: شواهد از توسعه امور سربازان بازنشسته

ABSTRACT

Measuring the total impact of health insurance receipt on household labor supply is important in an era of increased access to publicly provided and subsidized insurance. Although government expansion of health insurance to older workers leads to direct labor supply reductions for recipients, there may be spillover effects on the labor supply of uncovered spouses. While the most basic model predicts a decrease in overall household work hours, financial incentives such as credit constraints, target income levels, and theneed for ownhealthinsurance suggestthat spousallabor supplymightincrease.Incontrast, complementarities of spousal leisure would predict a decrease in labor supply for both spouses. Utilizing a mid-1990s expansion of health insurance for U.S. veterans, we provide evidence on the effects of public insurance availability on the labor supply of spouses. Using data from the Current Population Survey and Health and Retirement Study, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to compare the labor market behavior of the wives of older male veterans and non-veterans before and after the VA health benefits expansion. Although husbands’ labor supply decreases, wives’ labor supply increases, suggesting that financial incentives dominate complementarities of spousal leisure. This effect is strongest for wives with lower education levels and lower levels of household wealth and those who were not previously employed full-time. These findings have implications for government programs such as Medicare and Social Security and the Affordable Care Act.

6. Discussion and conclusion

When husbands approaching the age of retirement obtain public health insurance, the labor supply of their wives increases, on average. This resultis predominantly driven by less-educated wives and wives inlower-wealthhouseholds, who aremore likely to enter the work force when their husbands leave work. Wives with a high school education or less increase their labor supply 3 percentage points, a 6% increase. These less educated women also work more hours per week after the policy change and have higher weekly earnings. We find no statistically significant change in probability of work for wives with higher levels of education. The results by education level are consistent