Room: Phillips 307
Time: Mon 13:15 PM-14:45 PM

Self-Employment, Small Businesses, and Health Insurance

Chair: Michael Morrisey (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

Session Description

In the U.S., there is a strong link between health insurance and wage/salary employment which has received considerable attention in both the popular press and the economics literature as well. According to the 2007 estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation, based on data from the Current Population Survey, the overwhelming majority (61 percent) of non-elderly Americans receive health insurance through their employer or their spouse’s employer. Since coverage is often linked to full-time wage/salary employment, a larger fraction of the self-employed is uninsured. About 28 percent of self-employed persons were estimated to be without health insurance in 2006; this compares to only 16 percent of full-time wage/salary workers who similarly lacked coverage.

The extensive job-lock literature has shown that health insurance coverage influences labor market mobility, at least for certain groups of workers. However, this body of work largely overlooks the possibility that the present healthcare system in the U.S. may also have implications for entrepreneurial activity. Specifically, it could influence entry into self-employment from wage/salary employment, exit from self-employment into wage/salary jobs, as well as the likelihood of being self-employed. This proposed session features three closely related papers which quantify the importance of health insurance for entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. This session features a chair and three discussants that are among some of the top experts on employer-sponsored health insurance and the effects of various legislations in health insurance and labor markets.

Session Organizer: Tracy Regan (University of Miami) and Gulcin Gumus (Florida International University & IZA)

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Presentations

1. Is Employer-Based Health Insurance a Barrier to Entrepreneurship?

   Presenter: Kanika Kapur (University College Dublin and RAND)

   Discussant: Philip DeCicca (McMaster University)

2. The Impact of Insurance Subsidies on Self-Employment: Do State Individual Health Insurance Market Structures Matter?

   Presenter: Ithai Lurie (Department of the Treasury)

   Discussant: Michael Morrisey (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

3. Self-Employment and the Role of Health Insurance

   Presenter: Tracy Regan (University of Miami)

   Discussant: Thomas Buchmueller (University of Michigan)