Working Paper: NBER ID: w27936
Authors: Mark Duggan; Gopi Shah Goda; Gina Li
Abstract: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) not only changed the landscape of health insurance coverage in the United States, but also affected the relationship between working decisions and health insurance. In this paper, we estimate the impact of the ACA on the near-elderly (ages 60- 64) in the five years after the implementation of its key provisions in early 2014. We exploit variation across geographic areas in the pre-existing level of uninsurance and use 65-69 year olds, whose insurance coverage was unaffected by the ACA, as a within-region control group. Our findings indicate that the ACA increased health insurance coverage among the near elderly by 4.5 percentage points and reduced their labor force participation rate by 0.6 percentage points.
Keywords: Affordable Care Act; Health Insurance Coverage; Labor Market Outcomes; Near Elderly
JEL Codes: H2; H31; H51; H75; I13; J14; J21; J26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| ACA (G52) | health insurance coverage (I13) |
| pre-existing uninsurance rate (I13) | health insurance coverage (I13) |
| ACA (G52) | labor force participation rates (J49) |
| health insurance coverage (I13) | labor force participation rates (J49) |
| ACA (G52) | unemployment rates (J64) |
| ACA (G52) | self-employment rates (J23) |