Impacts of Public Health Insurance on Occupational Upgrading

Using data from the Current Population Survey’s Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups, the authors examine whether greater Medicaid generosity encourages people to switch toward better quality occupations. Exploiting variation in Medicaid eligibility expansions for children across states during the 1990s and early 2000s, they find that a one standard deviation increase in Medicaid infant income thresholds increased the likelihood that working parents move to a new occupation by 1.6 percentage points or 3.3%. Findings show that these effects are larger for those below 150% of the poverty line and for married parents who were not benefiting from Medicaid prior to the expansions. In addition, findings indicate that Medicaid generosity also increased mobility toward occupations with higher average wages and higher educational requirements. This article contributes to the literature on job lock by showing that access to public health insurance not only increases employment and job switches but also encourages occupational upgrading.