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The Cost of Health Insurance and Entry into Entrepreneurship

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  • Fossen, Frank M.

    (University of Nevada, Reno)

  • Hossain, Mobarak

    (University of Nevada, Reno)

  • Mukhopadhyay, Sankar

    (University of Nevada, Reno)

  • Toth, Peter

    (University of Nevada, Reno)

Abstract

Unavailable or expensive health insurance may hinder the transition of individuals from paid employment to entrepreneurship. The literature argues that the guaranteed availability of health insurance introduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 could reduce this barrier to entrepreneurship and thereby increase entrepreneurial activity. In this paper, we investigate how much the cost of health insurance when leaving paid employment—given availability of health insurance—matters for the decision to become an entrepreneur. We use individual-level data from the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC) combined with county-level panel data on health insurance costs in local Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX) introduced by the ACA to estimate county-treatment fixed-effects regressions. The results indicate that increasing the premium of the benchmark HIX plan by $100 per month decreases the annual probability of entry into self-employment by 0.25 percentage points, which corresponds to 18% of the average annual entry rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Fossen, Frank M. & Hossain, Mobarak & Mukhopadhyay, Sankar & Toth, Peter, 2021. "The Cost of Health Insurance and Entry into Entrepreneurship," IZA Discussion Papers 14891, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14891
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    entrepreneurship; health insurance; premium; deductible; MOOP;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

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