Full Citation
Title: Essays on the Affordable Care Act Mandates and Their Effects on Labor Supply and Health Outcomes
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: In this dissertation, I study the effects of the Affordable Care Act advance premium tax credits, or ACA “subsidy”, on labor supply for households that are not offered employer-sponsored health insurance using premium data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation linked to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from 2010 to 2017. Due to a sharp decrease to zero in the subsidy for households above 400 percent of the poverty line, households near this cutoff have a financial incentive to reduce their income by decreasing their labor supply at the intensive and/or extensive margins. Thus, I calculate the “potential lost subsidy” (PLS) for households near the cutoff as the subsidy they would receive at exactly 400 percent of the poverty line but may lose if earning just above it. On average, the PLS equals $100 a month for younger workers but is four to six times larger for older workers and greatly varies by geographic location and family size. Using OLS and probit regressions with interaction terms to capture the relevant households, I estimate the impacts of the discontinuity in subsidy on labor supply. I find that income and hours of work do not statistically decrease from one year to another in response to the PLS. Moreover, there is no evidence that the probability one of the household members stops working increases as the PLS gets larger. This null effect is a moderately precise zero and suggests
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Magne, Tiphanie
Institution: University of Delaware
Department: Economics
Advisor:
Degree:
Publisher Location:
Pages: 1-156
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Poverty and Welfare
Countries: