IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15150.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Medicaid Expansion on Job Loss Induced Mental Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US

Author

Listed:
  • Mukhopadhyay, Sankar

    (University of Nevada, Reno)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented level of job losses in the U.S., where a job loss is also associated with the loss of health insurance. This paper uses data from the 2020 Household Pulse Survey (HPS) and difference-in-difference (DD) regressions to estimate the effect of the Medicaid expansion on anxiety and depression associated with job loss. Estimates show that the respondents who live in expansion states are 96.6% (36.3%) more likely to have Medicaid coverage, and correspondingly, 14.2% (7.6%) less likely to have moderate to severe mental distress following their job loss (a family member's job loss) compared to those living in non-expansion states. Further explorations suggest that the economic security provided by Medicaid is as important (if not more) as the access or utilization to healthcare. The difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) estimates using just above and below the Medicare eligibility age (65) confirm these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Mukhopadhyay, Sankar, 2022. "The Effects of Medicaid Expansion on Job Loss Induced Mental Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US," IZA Discussion Papers 15150, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15150
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15150.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lund, Crick & Breen, Alison & Flisher, Alan J. & Kakuma, Ritsuko & Corrigall, Joanne & Joska, John A. & Swartz, Leslie & Patel, Vikram, 2010. "Poverty and common mental disorders in low and middle income countries: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 517-528, August.
    2. Clark, Andrew E & Georgellis, Yannis & Sanfey, Peter, 2001. "Scarring: The Psychological Impact of Past Unemployment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 68(270), pages 221-241, May.
    3. Johanna Catherine Maclean & Brendan Saloner, 2019. "The Effect of Public Insurance Expansions on Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 366-393, March.
    4. Luojia Hu & Robert Kaestner & Bhashkar Mazumder & Sarah Miller & Ashley Wong, 2016. "The Effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansions on Financial Wellbeing," NBER Working Papers 22170, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Schaller, Jessamyn & Stevens, Ann Huff, 2015. "Short-run effects of job loss on health conditions, health insurance, and health care utilization," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 190-203.
    6. Elgar, Frank J. & Pickett, William & Pförtner, Timo-Kolja & Gariépy, Geneviève & Gordon, David & Georgiades, Kathy & Davison, Colleen & Hammami, Nour & MacNeil, Allison H. & Azevedo Da Silva, Marine &, 2021. "Relative food insecurity, mental health and wellbeing in 160 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    7. Kamila Cygan‐Rehm & Daniel Kuehnle & Michael Oberfichtner, 2017. "Bounding the causal effect of unemployment on mental health: Nonparametric evidence from four countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(12), pages 1844-1861, December.
    8. Butterworth, Peter & Rodgers, Bryan & Windsor, Tim D., 2009. "Financial hardship, socio-economic position and depression: Results from the PATH Through Life Survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 229-237, July.
    9. Sarah Miller & Luojia Hu & Robert Kaestner & Bhashkar Mazumder & Ashley Wong, 2021. "The ACA Medicaid Expansion in Michigan and Financial Health," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 348-375, March.
    10. Daniel Sullivan & Till von Wachter, 2009. "Job Displacement and Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1265-1306.
    11. Weaver, Lesley Jo & Owens, Caroline & Tessema, Fasil & Kebede, Ayantu & Hadley, Craig, 2021. "Unpacking the “black box” of global food insecurity and mental health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    12. Andrew Clark & Yannis Georgellis & Peter Sanfey, 2001. "Scarring: The Psychological Impact of Past Unemployment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 68(270), pages 221-241, May.
    13. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Melvin Stephens, 2004. "Job Displacement, Disability, and Divorce," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 489-522, April.
    14. Sarah Miller & Laura R. Wherry, 2019. "Four Years Later: Insurance Coverage and Access to Care Continue to Diverge between ACA Medicaid Expansion and Non-Expansion States," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 327-333, May.
    15. Ghosh, Ausmita & Simon, Kosali & Sommers, Benjamin D., 2019. "The Effect of Health Insurance on Prescription Drug Use Among Low-Income Adults:Evidence from Recent Medicaid Expansions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 64-80.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lídia Farré & Francesco Fasani & Hannes Mueller, 2018. "Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-34, December.
    2. Everding, Jakob & Marcus, Jan, 2020. "The effect of unemployment on the smoking behavior of couples," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 154-170.
    3. Marcus, Jan, 2013. "The Effect of Unemployment on the Mental Health of Spouses – Evidence from plant closures in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 546-558.
    4. Lindgren, Petter Y. & Presterud, Ane Ofstad, 2021. "Expanding the Norwegian Armed Forces in the Time of Corona: Benefit-Cost Analysis in the Context of High Unemployment Rate," MPRA Paper 106405, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Patrick Bennett & Amine Ouazad, 2020. "Job Displacement, Unemployment, and Crime: Evidence from Danish Microdata and Reforms [The Link between Human Capital, Mass Layoffs, and Firm Deaths]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2182-2220.
    6. David J. G. Slusky & Donna K. Ginther, 2021. "Did Medicaid expansion reduce medical divorce?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 1139-1174, December.
    7. Francesco Bogliacino & Cristiano Codagnone & Frans Folkvord & Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, 2023. "The impact of labour market shocks on mental health: evidence from the Covid-19 first wave," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 40(3), pages 899-930, October.
    8. Zhao, Yuejun, 2023. "Job displacement and the mental health of households: Burden sharing counteracts spillover," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    9. Suppa, Nicolai, 2021. "Unemployment and subjective well-being," GLO Discussion Paper Series 760, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Kamila Cygan‐Rehm & Daniel Kuehnle & Michael Oberfichtner, 2017. "Bounding the causal effect of unemployment on mental health: Nonparametric evidence from four countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(12), pages 1844-1861, December.
    11. Milena Nikolova & Sinem H. Ayhan, 2019. "Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 799-844, July.
    12. Di Maio, Michele & Nisticò, Roberto, 2019. "The effect of parental job loss on child school dropout: Evidence from the Occupied Palestinian Territories," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    13. Alexander Ahammer & Dominik Grübl & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2020. "The health externalities of downsizing," Economics working papers 2020-26, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    14. Picchio, Matteo & Ubaldi, Michele, 2022. "Unemployment and Health: A Meta-Analysis," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1128, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    15. Saqib Amin & Marko Korhonen & Sanna Huikari, 2023. "Unemployment and Mental Health: An Instrumental Variable Analysis Using Municipal-level Data for Finland for 2002–2019," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 627-643, April.
    16. Israel Escudero-Castillo & Fco. Javier Mato-Díaz & Ana Rodríguez-Alvarez, 2023. "Psychological Well-Being during the COVID-19 Lockdown: Labour Market and Gender Implications," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 71-91, February.
    17. Nicholas A. Jolly, 2022. "The effects of job displacement on spousal health," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 123-152, March.
    18. Nikolova, Milena & Nikolaev, Boris N., 2021. "Family matters: The effects of parental unemployment in early childhood and adolescence on subjective well-being later in life," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 312-331.
    19. Pohlan, Laura, 2019. "Unemployment and social exclusion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 273-299.
    20. Maclean, Johanna Catherine, 2013. "The health effects of leaving school in a bad economy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 951-964.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Medicaid; COVID-19; mental health; anxiety; depression; job loss;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp15150. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.