The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession

John Cawley, Asako S. Moriya, Kosali I. Simon

NBER Working Paper No. 17600
Issued in November 2011, Revised in October 2013
NBER Program(s):Children, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Health Care, Health Economics, Labor Studies, Public Economics

This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 2004-2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007-09. We find that a one percentage point increase in the state unemployment rate is associated with a 1.67 percentage point (2.12%) reduction in the probability that men have health insurance; this effect is strongest among college-educated, white, and older (50-64 year old) men. For women and children, health insurance coverage is not significantly correlated with the unemployment rate, which may be the result of public health insurance acting as a social safety net. Compared to the previous recession, the health insurance coverage of men is more sensitive to the unemployment rate, which may be due to the nature of the Great Recession.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w17600

Published: Cawley, John, Asako S. Moriya, and Kosali Simon. 2015. "The Impact of the Macroeconomy on Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from the Great Recession." Health Economics, 24(2): 206-223. citation courtesy of