Working Papers
"In Sickness and in Health: The Influence of State and Federal Health Insurance Coverage Mandates on Marriage of Young Adults in the USA" with Scott Barkowski. January 2018.
Abstract:
We study the effects of state and federal dependent health insurance mandates on marriage rates of young adults, ages 19 to 25. Motivated by low rates of coverage among this age group, state governments began mandating health insurers in the 1970s to allow adult children to stay on their parents’ insurance plans. These state level efforts successfully increased insurance coverage rates, but also came with unintended implications for the marriage decisions of young adults. Almost all state mandates explicitly prohibited marriage as a condition of eligibility, thereby directly discouraging marriage. Additionally, by making access to health insurance through parents easier, the mandates made access through spouses’ employers relatively less attractive. To the extent that young adults were altering their marriage plans to gain access through potential spouses, they no longer needed to do so under the mandates, thereby implicitly discouraging marriage. When the dependent coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted, it effectively ended the state-based marriage restrictions, thereby encouraging marriage among young adults previously eligible for state mandates. On the other hand, for those who were not eligible for state mandates, the ACA represented an attractive new path to obtain coverage, thereby discouraging marriage for these young adults, just as the state mandates had implicitly done previously for others. Thus, the separate efforts at the state and federal level to address low coverage rates for young adults ended up interacting and influencing incentives for marriage in opposite directions. We study these interaction effects on marriage empirically using a new dataset we compiled on state-level dependent coverage mandates. Consistent with theoretical arguments, we find that, before the implementation of the ACA, state mandates lowered marriage rates by about 2 percentage points, but this pattern reversed upon the passage of the ACA. We also find that state mandates increased the probability of out-of-wedlock births among state-mandate-eligible women as compared to ineligible ones, but the ACA reversed this trend as well. Our study provides an important example where fundamental understanding of the effects of the ACA dependent coverage mandate can only be had with full consideration of the pre-existing state laws.
Working paper version here
Abstract:
We study the effects of state and federal dependent health insurance mandates on marriage rates of young adults, ages 19 to 25. Motivated by low rates of coverage among this age group, state governments began mandating health insurers in the 1970s to allow adult children to stay on their parents’ insurance plans. These state level efforts successfully increased insurance coverage rates, but also came with unintended implications for the marriage decisions of young adults. Almost all state mandates explicitly prohibited marriage as a condition of eligibility, thereby directly discouraging marriage. Additionally, by making access to health insurance through parents easier, the mandates made access through spouses’ employers relatively less attractive. To the extent that young adults were altering their marriage plans to gain access through potential spouses, they no longer needed to do so under the mandates, thereby implicitly discouraging marriage. When the dependent coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted, it effectively ended the state-based marriage restrictions, thereby encouraging marriage among young adults previously eligible for state mandates. On the other hand, for those who were not eligible for state mandates, the ACA represented an attractive new path to obtain coverage, thereby discouraging marriage for these young adults, just as the state mandates had implicitly done previously for others. Thus, the separate efforts at the state and federal level to address low coverage rates for young adults ended up interacting and influencing incentives for marriage in opposite directions. We study these interaction effects on marriage empirically using a new dataset we compiled on state-level dependent coverage mandates. Consistent with theoretical arguments, we find that, before the implementation of the ACA, state mandates lowered marriage rates by about 2 percentage points, but this pattern reversed upon the passage of the ACA. We also find that state mandates increased the probability of out-of-wedlock births among state-mandate-eligible women as compared to ineligible ones, but the ACA reversed this trend as well. Our study provides an important example where fundamental understanding of the effects of the ACA dependent coverage mandate can only be had with full consideration of the pre-existing state laws.
Working paper version here
"Limited Legal Recourse for Older Women’s Intersectional Discrimination Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act" March 2018. Accepted. The Elder Law Journal.
Abstract:
Older women compose a large share of labor force in the U.S. There are two federal statutes that can provide protection for older women against employers’ discriminatory behavior: the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Title VII). Theories and empirical evidence suggest that older women are more discriminated against for being old and female, but there is a concerning policy implication that current legislation does not provide adequate protection for older women. The main reason for this concern is that older women’s intersectional discrimination invokes age-plus-sex or sex-plus-age cause of action. However, the courts do not recognize this cause of action under the ADEA and they have mixed views on this issue under Title VII. This article discusses evidence of older women’s intersectional discrimination and the importance of recognizing this intersectionality in proof structure. It also reviews case laws and the effectiveness of the age discrimination laws on older women’s labor market outcomes. The findings indicate that the ADEA does not provide equal employment opportunities for older women. Older women’s legal recourse for their unique intersectional discrimination for being old and female is constrained under the ADEA and Title VII strictly due to legislative peculiarities in statutes intended to solve this exact problem.
Working paper version here
Abstract:
Older women compose a large share of labor force in the U.S. There are two federal statutes that can provide protection for older women against employers’ discriminatory behavior: the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Title VII). Theories and empirical evidence suggest that older women are more discriminated against for being old and female, but there is a concerning policy implication that current legislation does not provide adequate protection for older women. The main reason for this concern is that older women’s intersectional discrimination invokes age-plus-sex or sex-plus-age cause of action. However, the courts do not recognize this cause of action under the ADEA and they have mixed views on this issue under Title VII. This article discusses evidence of older women’s intersectional discrimination and the importance of recognizing this intersectionality in proof structure. It also reviews case laws and the effectiveness of the age discrimination laws on older women’s labor market outcomes. The findings indicate that the ADEA does not provide equal employment opportunities for older women. Older women’s legal recourse for their unique intersectional discrimination for being old and female is constrained under the ADEA and Title VII strictly due to legislative peculiarities in statutes intended to solve this exact problem.
Working paper version here
"Falling Between the Cracks: Discrimination Laws and Older Women" November 2017.
Abstract:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects women from sex discrimination, while the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 prohibits discrimination against workers over the age of 40. Since an older woman may be subject to discrimination in the workplace based on both age and sex, legal scholars argue that age and sex discrimination laws must be used jointly to protect the older-woman minority group. However, courts do not always use them together in practice and do not necessarily give older women protection based on membership in both protected classes. This implies that age discrimination laws alone may be not as effective, or may be even ineffective in protecting older women compared to older men. I test this implication by estimating the differential effect of age discrimination laws on labor market outcomes between women and men. The findings show that age discrimination laws do far less to improve labor market outcomes for older women than for older men, which supports the argument that older women need to be classified as a subgroup of two protected classes to receive adequate protection.
Abstract:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects women from sex discrimination, while the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 prohibits discrimination against workers over the age of 40. Since an older woman may be subject to discrimination in the workplace based on both age and sex, legal scholars argue that age and sex discrimination laws must be used jointly to protect the older-woman minority group. However, courts do not always use them together in practice and do not necessarily give older women protection based on membership in both protected classes. This implies that age discrimination laws alone may be not as effective, or may be even ineffective in protecting older women compared to older men. I test this implication by estimating the differential effect of age discrimination laws on labor market outcomes between women and men. The findings show that age discrimination laws do far less to improve labor market outcomes for older women than for older men, which supports the argument that older women need to be classified as a subgroup of two protected classes to receive adequate protection.