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| Home > Conferences & Events Home > Coverage
Impacts Across the Lifespan> Conference Highlights |
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Ann Arbor Research Conferences
School, Work, Retirement:
Coverage Impacts Across the Lifespan
July 7 - 8, 2005
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Papers presented at the 2005 summer conference address coverage
issues facing different population groups representing different
points in the lifespan: children, working adults, and those
nearing retirement. In addition, two papers examined the effect
of health status or chronic illness on coverage outcomes on
subsets of working adults. |
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| Conference Highlights | Participant List | Papers Presented |
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Author |
Conference Paper |
Summary |
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Bound, John
Stinebrickner, Todd
Waidmann, Timothy |
Using a Structural Retirement Model
to Simulate the Effect of Changes to the OASDI and
Medicare Programs (PDF) |
Applying for and obtaining Social Security disability insurance (DI) is one way to leave the workforce; retirement is another. While the cash payments have been the focus of much research about the influence of the DI program on exits from the labor force, DI also provides a way to obtain Medicare coverage prior to reaching age 65. Using a dynamic programming model, Bound Stinebrickner, and Waidmann find what they describe as only small effect of Medicare on disability applications. |
Project
Summary |
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Cullen,
Julianne B.
DeCicca, Philip
Volden, Craig |
Health Insurance Coverage
and School Performance (PDF) |
Numerous studies have examined the impact of public program expansions for low income children, though most have looked at the impacts on coverage and no study has yet looked at the impact on educational as well as health care outcomes. This study uses a unique longitudinal data source that tracks low income children from kindergarten through third grade. Preliminary findings suggest that expansions |
Project
Summary |
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Ettner, Susan
Masaquel, Anthony
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How Does the Persistence of Depression
Influence the Continuity, Type and Generosity of
Health Insurance Coverage? (Publication Pending) |
It is difficult to study the effect of chronic illness on coverage because health status both affects and is affected by health insurance status. This study uses data from a randomized study population to examine the influence of persistent depression on coverage outcomes. The findings suggest that persistent depression (relative to depression that subsides over time) increases to a small but significant degree the probability of having public coverage and of having a less generous benefit package. The random assignment design allows the study to overcome common problems faced in other studies attempting to link health and coverage. |
Project Summary |
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Flinn, Christopher
Dey, Matthew S. |
Employer-Provided Health Insurance
and Household Search (PDF) |
In contrast to the authors' prior work that developed an equilibrium model of health insurance and job search abstracted from household decision making, this paper considers household decision making in a partial equilibrium setting. The paper makes three contributions. First, it offers a theoretical contribution by developing a model that allows for multiple agent search over more than one job characteristic. The model suggests that a second spouse having health insurance from his or her job provides an option value through the option for one spouse to take a better paying job without health insurance or in case one spouse loses his or her job. Second, it demonstrates that the difference in cross-sectional mean wages between those in jobs with and without health insurance does not estimate marginal willingness to pay. Third, it provides a way to estimate marginal willingness to pay for all agents in the population. |
Project
Summary |
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Hirth,
Richard
Chernew, Mike
Shelton, Emily
Baughman, Reagan
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How Significant are Mismatches Between
Workers' Preferences and Employers' Health Insurance
Provision in Explaining Aggregate Patterns of Coverage? (PDF) |
In the standard economic model, workers trade off wages and fringe benefits.
A majority of workers have jobs that come with the opportunity to obtain health insurance through their employment.
Two groups of workers can be said to be mismatched: first, those who desire coverage and are willing to trade off more wages
than the cost of coverage and yet do not have health insurance and second, those who have coverage but would prefer additional
wages to health insurance, a majority of whom have health insurance through another source, such as a spouse.
Hirth and colleague set out to estimate what share of workers are mismatched. They find 21.9 percent of workers are mismatched.
About six percent of these are uninsured. Together with their dependents, these mismatched uninsured represent one in six of
the uninsured. |
Project Summary |
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Kapur, Kanika
Escarce, Jose
Marquis, M. Susan
Simon, Kosali
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Where Do the Sick Go? Health Insurance & Enrollment
in Small and Large Firms (PDF) |
It is well known that smaller employers face higher and more variable costs for employment-based health insurance coverage.
It is not clear, however, the extent to which these higher costs translate into distorted labor market outcomes for employers
and employees. This study uses data from the 1996-2000 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to estimate the magnitude of labor market
distortions in hiring, employment, and separations. The study finds evidence that workers with high expected health costs are less
likely to be new hires and to be employed in small firms that offer coverage to their workers.
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Project
Summary |
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Lee, Ho Jin
Tian, Wei-Hua
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State Children's Health
Insurance Program Participation and Substitution (PDF) |
Several recent studies have examined the impact of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
on coverage outcomes, but few have examined the differential effects of particular program design features.
This study uses data from the Current Population Survey covering 1995-2001 to estimate the e4ffects of four policies:
income eligibility expansion, presumptive eligibility, premiums, and waiting periods.
It finds that the income eligibility expansions and presumptive eligibility policies increase program
participation among eligibles children and decrease rates of uninsurance. In contrast, premiums and waiting
periods decrease the takeup of public coverage and increase rates of uninsurance. |
Project
Summary |
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Benitez-Silva, Hugo
Boz, Emine
Buchinsky, Moshe
Nichols, Joseph
Roy, Sharbani
Rust, John
Tristao, Ignez |
Health Status, Insurance, and Expenditures:
An Analysis of the Health and Retirement Survey (PDF) |
With this paper, a research group lead by John Rust begins to consider the role of pre-retirement
health insurance coverage, health status, and health expenditures on the transition from work to retirement.
Looking at the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) sample, they find half (unweighted) had some period without health insurance.
Only 4 percent were uninsured in all waves prior to obtaining Medicare.
They also present descriptive models for gaining and losing health insurance.
For health expenditures, they present data on components of out of pocket expenditures and estimate parameters of a
Pareto distribution to model total out of pocket health costs, conditioning on a range of health, health care,
and utilization variables.
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Project Summary |
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