IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v14y2022i3p273-95.html

Out of the Woodwork: Enrollment Spillovers in the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Sacarny
  • Katherine Baicker
  • Amy Finkelstein

Abstract

We study the impact of expanded adult Medicaid eligibility on the enrollment of already-eligible children. We analyze the 2008 Oregon Medicaid lottery, in which some low-income uninsured adults were randomly selected to be allowed to apply for Medicaid. Children in these households were eligible for Medicaid irrespective of the lottery outcome. We estimate statistically significant but transitory impacts of adult lottery selection on child Medicaid enrollment: at three months after the lottery, for every nine adults who enrolled in Medicaid due to winning the lottery, one additional child also enrolled. Our results shed light on the existence, magnitude, and nature of so-called "woodwork effects."

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Sacarny & Katherine Baicker & Amy Finkelstein, 2022. "Out of the Woodwork: Enrollment Spillovers in the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 273-295, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:273-95
    DOI: 10.1257/pol.20200172
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200172
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E143081V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200172.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200172.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pol.20200172?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy J. Halliday & Randall Q. Akee, 2020. "The impact of Medicaid on medical utilization in a vulnerable population: Evidence from COFA migrants," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(10), pages 1231-1250, October.
    2. Liyang Sun, 2021. "Empirical Welfare Maximization with Constraints," Papers 2103.15298, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2025.
    3. Lipton, Brandy J., 2021. "Adult Medicaid benefit generosity and receipt of recommended health services among low-income children: The spillover effects of Medicaid adult dental coverage expansions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    4. Shooshan Danagoulian & Daniel Grossman & David Slusky, 2022. "Health Care Following Environmental Disasters: Evidence from Flint," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(4), pages 1060-1089, September.
    5. Liam Sigaud & Markus Bjoerkheim & Vitor Melo, 2024. "The Hidden Subsidy of the Affordable Care Act," Papers 2407.07217, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:273-95. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.