ERIU Funded Research Projects

Author: Kuttner, Hanns
Working Paper: Higher Income Employees Without Health Insurance: Nominally But Not Really A Growing Problem (PDF) ; August 2005

Abstract:
The number of uninsured who live in households with incomes above $50,000 grew by 114.5 percent over the ten years from 1993 to 2003 and by 20.8 percent over the five years from 1998 to 2003. Growth in the number uninsured in an income group reflects (1) change in the number of people in the income group and (2) change in the share within the group who are uninsured. While the number in higher income households rose substantially, the share without health insurance did not. Changes in income, nominal and real, not changes in the share who have health insurance, have driven the increase in the number of people without health insurance in higher income households.

Author: Kuttner, Hanns ; Baughman, Reagan ; Christian, Michael ; Mortensen, Karoline
Working Paper: Employment and Health Insurance: Views from Five Surveys (PDF) ; September 2004

Abstract:
Five national surveys offer similar accounts of employment-based health insurance and the subset of the uninsured who have declined employment-based health insurance. While offering similar stories, the surveys are far from identical in the number of people they place at each turn in the story, with the relative size of the difference tending to grow as the subset becomes smaller. In disentangling sources of disagreement, we find no survey has an absolute advantage. The advantages are comparative. Thus we see nothing in the differences across the surveys that is likely to disturb the current equilibrium of economists who look at health insurance relying on the Current Population Survey and health services researchers the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Nonetheless, this equilibrium leaves unused some of the information that can be had from other surveys, and we close with some of that information.