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Measuring the Impact of Health Insurance on Levels and Trends in Inequality

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  • Richard V. Burkhauser
  • Kosali I. Simon

Abstract

A substantial part of the inequality literature in the United States has focused on yearly levels and trends in income and its distribution over time. Recent findings in that literature show that median income appears to be stagnating with income growth primarily coming at higher income levels. But the value of health insurance is an important and growing source of economic well being for American households that is missed by focusing solely on income. In this paper we take estimates of the value of different types of health insurance received by households and add them to usual pre tax post transfer measures of income from the Current Population Survey's March Annual Demographic Supplement for income years 1995-2008 to investigate their impact on levels and trends in measured inequality. We show that ignoring the value of health insurance coverage will substantially understate the level of economic well being of Americans and its upward trend and overstate the level of inequality and its upward trend. As an application of our fuller measure of income, we consider how two provisions of current health reform proposals to expand health insurance affect the level and distribution of economic well being.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard V. Burkhauser & Kosali I. Simon, 2010. "Measuring the Impact of Health Insurance on Levels and Trends in Inequality," NBER Working Papers 15811, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15811
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Cross-Country Inequality Trends," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 121-149, February.
    2. Helen Levy, 2006. "Health Insurance and the Wage Gap," NBER Working Papers 11975, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Remler, D.K. & Glied, S.A., 2003. "What other programs can teach us: Increasing participation in health insurance programs," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 93(1), pages 67-74.
    4. Andrea Brandolini & Anthony B. Atkinson, 2001. "Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of "Secondary" Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries As a Case Study," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 771-799, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    2. Robert Moffitt, 2015. "The Deserving Poor, the Family, and the U.S. Welfare System," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(3), pages 729-749, June.
    3. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Larrimore, Jeff & Simon, Kosali I., 2012. "A "Second Opinion" on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(1), pages 7-32, March.
    4. Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore & Sean Lyons, 2017. "Measuring Health Insurance Benefits: The Case Of People With Disabilities," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 439-456, July.
    5. Robert Kaestner & Darren Lubotsky, 2016. "Health Insurance and Income Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 53-78, Spring.
    6. Elwell, James & Corinth, Kevin & Burkhauser, Richard V., 2019. "Income Growth and its Distribution from Eisenhower to Obama: The Growing Importance of In-Kind Transfers (1959-2016)," IZA Discussion Papers 12757, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Hubert Janicki & Brett O’Hara & Alice Zawacki, 2013. "Comparing Methods For Imputing Employer Health Insurance Contributions In The Current Population Survey," Working Papers 13-41, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    8. Sanders Korenman & Dahlia K. Remler & Rosemary T. Hyson, 2019. "Accounting for the Impact of Medicaid on Child Poverty," NBER Working Papers 25973, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Emanuela Raffinetti & Elena Siletti & Achille Vernizzi, 2017. "Analyzing the Effects of Negative and Non-negative Values on Income Inequality: Evidence from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth of the Bank of Italy (2012)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 185-207, August.
    10. Korenman, Sanders D. & Remler, Dahlia K., 2016. "Including health insurance in poverty measurement: The impact of Massachusetts health reform on poverty," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 27-35.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

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