The Effect of Health Insurance on Married Female Labor Supply

We investigate the effects of employer-provided health insurance on the labor supply of married women. Because health benefits commonly are restricted to full-time workers, wives who prefer to work short hours but have no alternate source of insurance may work long hours in order to acquire coverage...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of human resources 1999, Vol.34 (1), p.42-70
Main Authors: Buchmueller, Thomas C., Valletta, Robert G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Children
Compensation
Couples
Effects
Employees
Employer provided health insurance
Employers
Employment
Female employees
Females
Group health insurance
Health insurance
Husbands
Insurance coverage
Labor supply
Marital Status
Nonwage income
Part time employment
Regression analysis
Studies
Wives
Womens health
Working hours
Working women
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Summary:We investigate the effects of employer-provided health insurance on the labor supply of married women. Because health benefits commonly are restricted to full-time workers, wives who prefer to work short hours but have no alternate source of insurance may work long hours in order to acquire coverage for their families. We use data from the April 1993 Current Population Survey Benefits Supplement, and we exploit variation in coverage under husbands' health plans to estimate the magnitude of this effect. Our reduced-form labor supply models indicate a strong negative effect of husbands' health insurance on wives' work hours, particularly in families with children. This effect persists when we replace husbands' insurance coverage with husbands' offered insurance, and when we use a multinomial logit model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity in family labor supply preferences.
ISSN:0022-166X
1548-8004
DOI:10.2307/146302