Effects of Dependent Health Insurance Coverage Mandates on Fathers’ Job Mobility and Compensation

In the United States, young adults have low rates of health insurance coverage. In response, some state governments and the federal government began mandating health insurance companies to allow adult children to stay on their parent’s insurance plans. These policies increased insurance rates among young adults but may have unintended consequences on the labor market outcomes of their parents. To assess the existence and extent of such potential consequences, I study the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) federal mandate and state mandates on fathers’ voluntary job separation rates (job-lock and job-push) and their compensation. More specifically, given the preexisting impacts of the state mandates on young adults, I examine both the independent effects of the state mandates and the differential effects of the federal mandate by state mandate eligibility. By using the Survey of Income and Program Participation data, I observe that the ACA’s effect was concentrated among those fathers whose children had not been eligible for state mandates, showing a decrease of 0.8 percentage points in the likelihood of voluntary job separation. When I examine the state mandate independently, however, I find a slightly smaller estimate size without statistical significance, implying that the state mandates may not extensively impact fathers’ job mobility. Despite its statistical insignificance, this may still provide evidence of a tangential effect of the state mandates given that they diluted the effect of the ACA.