Author: Cawley, John ; Simon, Kosali
Working Paper: The Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on the Health Insurance Coverage of Americans (PDF) ; October 2003
Research Highlight 5 (HTML) (PDF) ; April 2004
Q & A with John Cawley, Ph.D (HTML) ; April 2004
Research Findings (HTML)
Abstract:
The primary objective of this paper is to improve our understanding of the
historical relationship between state and national macroeconomic climate
and the health insurance coverage of Americans. The secondary objective of
this paper is to use the historical finds to estimate how the number of
uninsured Americans changed during the 2001 recession, and to estimate
whether enough people have gained health insurance during the current
recovery to offset the losses during the recession. We conclude that the
macroeconomy (in particular, the unemployment rate) is correlated with the
probability of health insurance coverage and that this correlation is
only partly explained by hanged in individuals' employment status. We find
that government-provided coverage for children is less than fully
counter-cyclical. Finally, we estimate that roughly one million Americans
lost health insurance due to macroeconomic conditions during the 2001 recession.
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