Author: Dushi, Irena ; Honig, Marjorie
Working Paper: Offers or Take-Up:
Explaining Minorities’ Lower Health Insurance
Coverage (PDF) ; March
2005
Research Findings (HTML)
Abstract:
Coverage under employment-based health insurance has declined in recent years among
full-time workers in the U.S. This change has been particularly dramatic for some minority
populations. By 2001, CPS data reveal 21 and 15 percentage point differentials between the
coverage rates of Hispanic and non-Hispanic white men and women. Data from the Survey of
Income and Program Participation (SIPP) indicate that white-minority disparities are explained
by differences in employer offers rather than in household decisions regarding take-up of offered
coverage.
We find that race and ethnicity have significant
effects on offer probabilities after controlling
for detailed demographic and job characteristics.
The magnitudes of these effects
differ across racial and ethnic groups and by household
composition and gender. Aggregating across all race
and ethnicity groups, we compare offer and take-up
functions between white and
minority workers. Wages and employment in large
firms and in professional and technical occupations
have considerably larger effects on the probabilities
that minority workers, relative
to whites, are offered health benefits. We also
find that the proportions of white-minority differences
in offer and take-up probabilities that are explained
by job and demographic characteristics differ substantially
by household composition and by gender. |
