Health insurance access and the career choices of college graduates with majors in the arts: evidence from the affordable care act’s dependent coverage expansion

In this study, we test for the impact of the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage expansion on the career choices of young college graduates with majors in the arts in the United States. Since working as an artist often involves employment arrangements like self-employment and project-based work that lack health insurance coverage, policies that expand access to health insurance have the potential to make employment in the arts more attractive for arts graduates. Using American Community Survey data, we use a difference-in-differences regression approach comparing the likelihood of working in the arts for college graduates with majors in the arts who are just under- and just over-26, pre- and post-implementation of the ACA’s dependent coverage expansion. We find that the ACA increased the likelihood that arts graduates under 26 years of age were working in the arts by over 2% points, effects that are statistically significant and large as less than 20% of arts graduates in our sample work in the arts. Such changes are not observed for other graduates, suggesting that this response is unique to arts graduates, who are often found to behave differently than other workers.