Employer Health Benefit Costs and Demand for Part-Time Labor
April 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-08
Abstract
The link between rising employer costs for health insurance benefits and demand for part-time workers is investigated using non-public data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey- Insurance Component (MEPS-IC). The MEPS-IC is a nationally representative, annual establishment survey from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Pooling the establishment level data from the MEPS-IC from 1996-2004 and matching with the Longitudinal Business Database and supplemental economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a reduced form model of the percent of total FTE employees working part-time is estimated. This is modeled as a function of the employer health insurance contribution, establishment characteristics, and state-level economic indicators. To account for potential endogeneity, health insurance expenditures are estimated using instrumental variables (IVs). The unit of analysis is establishments that offer health insurance to full-time employees but not part time employees. Conditional on establishments offering health insurance to full-time employees, a 1 percent increase in employer health insurance contributions results in a 3.7 percent increase in part-time employees working at establishments in the U.S.
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provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
endogeneity,
econometric,
employed,
employ,
employee,
labor,
expenditure,
insurance,
workforce,
hiring,
worker,
expense,
enrollment,
labor statistics,
unemployment rates,
coverage,
healthcare,
health insurance,
insurance employer,
state employment,
unemployed,
insurance coverage,
insurance premiums
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identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Bureau of Labor Statistics,
National Science Foundation,
Internal Revenue Service,
Ordinary Least Squares,
2SLS,
Current Population Survey,
Longitudinal Business Database,
Department of Economics,
Chicago Census Research Data Center,
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
Special Sworn Status,
AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component
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