IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Effects of Infertility Insurance Mandates on Fertility

Author Info

Listed author(s):

Abstract

Infertility currently affects over 6 million individuals in the United States. While most health insurance plans nationwide do not cover infertility diagnoses or treatments, to date fifteen states have enacted some form of infertility insurance mandate. In this paper, I use data from the Vital Statistics Detail Natality Data and Census population estimates to examine whether these statelevel mandates were successful in increasing fertility rates. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I exploit variation in the enactment of mandates both across states and over time, and identify control groups that should not have been affected by infertility coverage. My results suggest that the mandates significantly increase first birth rates for women over 35, and these results are robust to a number of specification tests.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/schmidtinfertility.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Department of Economics, Williams College in its series Department of Economics Working Papers with number 2005-07.

as
in new window

Length: 33 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2005
Publication status: published in Journal of Health Economics, May 2007, v. 26, iss. 3, pp. 431-46.
Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2005-07
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Williamstown, MA 01267

Phone: 413 597 2476
Fax: 413 597 4045
Web page: http://econ.williams.edu
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Order Information: Email:


Keywords: infertility; impaired fecundity; insurance mandates; fertility;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
  • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Rajeev Dehejia & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2004. "Booms, Busts, and Babies' Health," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(3), pages 1091-1130.
  2. Schmidt, Lucie, 2007. "Effects of infertility insurance mandates on fertility," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 431-446, May.
  3. Thomas S. Dee, 2001. "The Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Ages on Teen Childbearing," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(4), pages 823-838.
  4. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
  5. Lucie Schmidt, 2005. "Infertility Insurance Mandates and Fertility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 204-208, May.
  6. Robert Kaestner & Kosali Ilayperuma Simon, 2002. "Labor Market Consequences of State Health Insurance Regulation," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(1), pages 136-159, October.
  7. Gruber, Jonathan, 1994. "The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 622-641, June.
  8. Jacob Alex Klerman, 1999. "U.S. Abortion Policy and Fertility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 261-264, May.
  9. repec:pri:cheawb:adriana_booms.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
  10. Marianne Bitler, 2005. "Effects of Increased Access to Infertility Treatment on Infant and Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from Health Insurance Mandates," PPIC Working Papers 2005.06, Public Policy Institute of California.
  11. Marianne Bitler & Lucie Schmidt, 2006. "Health disparities and infertility: impacts of state-level insurance mandates," Department of Economics Working Papers 2006-04, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Nov 2006.
  12. Summers, Lawrence H, 1989. "Some Simple Economics of Mandated Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 177-183, May.
  13. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
  14. Gruber, Jonathan, 1994. "State-mandated benefits and employer-provided health insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 433-464, November.
  15. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
  16. Manning, Willard G. & Mullahy, John, 2001. "Estimating log models: to transform or not to transform?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 461-494, July.
  17. Phillip B. Levine, 2002. "The Impact of Social Policy and Economic Activity Throughout the Fertility Decision Tree," NBER Working Papers 9021, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2005-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Stephen Sheppard)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.