Research
"Does the ACA Medicaid Expansion Encourage Labor Market Exits of Older Workers? " -Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Labor Research [Link]
In this study, I examine the effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on the labor supply decisions of non-disabled, low-educated, childless adults ages 50-64. I employ a triple-differences (DDD) methodology, exploiting variation in individuals’ health insurance status and the expansion decisions of states. I find that with Medicaid expansion, insured workers without retirement health insurance (RHI) decreased full-time work by 8.4 percentage points relative to those with RHI and those without any employer-sponsored coverage at all. Among those no longer working full-time, 77 percent transitioned to complete retirement.
"Heterogeneity in Crowd-Out by Risk Aversion: Assessing the Effect of the ACA Medicaid Expansion" - Working Paper
Medicaid eligibility expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to address the high uninsured rate. The aim is to increase coverage among uninsured low-income individuals. However, the expansion is not limited to previously uninsured, so crowding-out pre-existing private health insurance might occur. The literature studying crowd-out from Medicaid expansions has produced mixed results. In addition, most of these studies aimed to determine the average treated crowd-out rate. However, when risk preference differs across individuals, analyzing average crowd-out rates would be insufficient because differences in risk preference might lead to individuals’ responses to Medicaid expansion being vastly different. In this study, I estimate heterogeneity in crowd-out of private health insurance by risk aversion with Medicaid expansion under the ACA. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, I utilize a difference-in-differences approach. I construct measures of risk aversion by exploiting unique questions eliciting risk preferences in the HRS. I find that Medicaid expansion led to a decrease in private coverage among risk-lover individuals by 5 percentage points; however, expansion did not lead to any meaningful change in private coverage for risk-averse individuals. This finding suggests that high-risk-averse individuals are willing to keep their private coverage even though they become eligible for Medicaid, which might be a sign of sorting into private coverage.
Figure: Private Coveraga
Risk Lover
Risk Averse
"How Changes in Lifestyle During Retirement Affect Mental and Physical Health" - Working Paper
In this paper, I estimate the causal impact of retirement on health measures and investigate potential mechanisms driving the health effects of retirement. I decompose the retirement effect into two parts: (i) the part mediated by health behaviors which I measure with heavy drinking, exercise, and time use; (ii) a residual which includes, for instance, relief from occupational strain, a decreasing income, loss of purpose. To address the endogeneity of retirement on individual health status or health-related behaviors, I employ the eligibility age for social security as an instrument. The overall total effect of retirement is found to be beneficial for female and male physical and mental health. Moreover, I find that lifestyle change induced by retirement, specifically an increase in the probability of doing exercise, intensifies the beneficial effect of retirement on female and male mental health.
"The Effect of ACA Medicaid Expansions on Income Inequality" (with Sezen Ozcan Onal, and Scott J. Adams) - (In Progress)
This paper analyses how income inequality is affected by access to healthcare. Specifically, we examined the effect of Medicaid expansions under the 2010 Affordable Care Act law and the role of Community Health Centers (CHCs) in this framework by using a dynamic panel model. Our findings suggest that CHCs have a decreasing effect on income inequality in the expansion states.