Working Paper: NBER ID: w21629
Authors: Richard V. Burkhauser; Jeff Larrimore; Sean Lyons
Abstract: Since 2012 the Congressional Budget Office has included an estimate of the market value of government-provided health insurance coverage in its measures of household income. We follow this practice for both public and private health insurance to capture the impact of greater access to government-provided health insurance for working-age people with disabilities, whose value rose in 2010 dollars from $11.7B in 1980 to $114.3B in 2012. We then consider the more general implications of incorporating estimates of the market price of insurance, equivalent to that provided by the government, into policy analyses in a post-Affordable Care Act world.
Keywords: Health Insurance; Disability; Income Measurement; Public Policy
JEL Codes: D31; H24; I18; J31
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| market value of government-provided health insurance (H51) | observed income levels of individuals with disabilities (H53) |
| market value of government-provided health insurance (H51) | median disposable income (adjusted to include health insurance value) (I13) |
| market value of government-provided health insurance (H51) | income gap between individuals with and without disabilities (I24) |
| exclusion of market value of health insurance from income measures (G52) | underestimation of resources available to individuals with disabilities (J14) |