CAREER: The Impact of Expanded Health Insurance Coverage

Project Outcomes Statement

This award has produced several outcomes related to the impacts of expanded health insurance coverage. A major outcome is a publication in the Review of Economic Studies, entitled “Long-Term Impacts of Childhood Medicaid Expansions on Outcomes in Adulthood,” joint with David Brown and Ithai Lurie. This publication is one of the first to use administrative tax records for health economics research, allowing us to examine the impact of Medicaid expansions during childhood on a wide variety of outcomes in adulthood for the population of children eligible for Medicaid. A key finding is that because children eligible for Medicaid pay more taxes as adults, the government recoups a large portion of its investment in childhood Medicaid. This finding has received attention in the popular press, nationally as well as locally, especially as states have considered whether to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. As a related outcome, we have released a Medicaid calculator, which other researchers can use to determine Medicaid eligibility across states and over time. The award has also supported work on the value of health insurance over time and the marginal returns to medical spending. These projects have produced insights regarding insurance design and medical spending that can help future researchers and policymakers to design effective policies. Beyond the outcomes of the projects themselves, this award has been used to support the development of junior researchers and to produce publicly available problem sets that are in use in undergraduate and graduate courses at several institutions.