Working Paper: NBER ID: w13578
Authors: Richard V. Burkhauser; Kosali I. Simon
Abstract: Critics of pay or play mandates, borrowing from the large empirical minimum wage literature, provide evidence that they reduce employment. Borrowing from a smaller empirical minimum wage literature, we provide evidence that they also are a blunt instrument for funding health insurance for the working poor. The vast majority of those who benefit from pay or play mandates which require employers to either provide appropriate health insurance for their workers or pay a flat per hour tax to offset the cost of health care live in families with incomes twice the poverty line or more and, depending on how coverage is determined, the mandate will leave a significant share of the working poor ineligible for such benefits either because their hourly wage rate is too high or they work for smaller exempt firms.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: I18; I32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| pay or play mandates (J33) | decrease employment for low-skilled workers (F66) |
| pay or play mandates (J33) | increase health insurance coverage (I13) |
| increase health insurance coverage (I13) | decrease employment for low-skilled workers (F66) |
| pay or play mandates (J33) | blunt instruments for addressing health insurance coverage (I13) |
| exemptions for smaller firms (L25) | limit effectiveness of pay or play mandates (J32) |