Session: For Love or Health Insurance: Marital Status, Policy and Coverage
Room: Phillips 219
Time: Wed 08:30-10:00

Presenter: Christopher Carpenter (University of California, Irvine. )

Discussant: Scott HankinsUniversity of Kentucky

Abstract

Health disparities associated with a minority sexual orientation are well-documented.  Lower health insurance coverage among gays and lesbians—possibly due to unequal access to a same-sex partner’s employer-sponsored insurance (ESI)—is commonly cited as a contributing factor to these disparities.  Several states have recently adopted laws that require firms to treat same-sex partners in the same way as different-sex spouses with respect to benefits such as ESI; we study California, which enacted such a reform (AB205) in 2005.  We first use data from the 2001 and 2003 California Health Interview Surveys (CHIS) to show that in the years just prior to reform, both gay men and lesbians were significantly less likely to have ESI in someone else’s name than heterosexual men and women.  However, these gaps were largely offset by higher rates of coverage from other sources: lesbians had a significantly higher rate of own-name ESI coverage than heterosexual women, while gay men were more likely than heterosexual men to have Medicaid and individually purchased insurance.  Pooling CHIS data from 2001 to 2007, we provide the literature’s first evaluation of this type of policy.  We find that California’s domestic partner benefits law had no effects on gay/straight differences in health insurance from any source for men.  In contrast, for women we find that AB205 significantly increased partnership, reduced full-time employment, and increased health insurance coverage among lesbians relative to heterosexual women.  Our results suggest that policies such as AB205 may reduce sexual-orientation based disparities in health insurance coverage for women.

Bio: Christopher “Kitt” Carpenter is Associate Professor of Economics/Public Policy at The Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).  He holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a BA in mathematics, economics, and public service from Albion College in Michigan.  His research interests include empirical health economics, labor economics, economic demography, and public policy evaluation.  He is an expert on the policy related causes and consequences of substance use and other health outcomes for adolescents.  He has also studied the effects of workplace substance use policies, as well as the effects of insurance mandates on cancer screenings.  His research has appeared in American Economic Journal – Applied Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Journal of Law and Economics and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIAAA), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the UC Office of the President.

Key Terms

sexual orientation, health insurance, domestic partner benefits, quasi-experiment

Authors:

Christopher Carpenter (University of California Irvine) and Thomas Buchmueller (University of Michigan)