Obesity and Employer-Provided Health Insurance

김대환

Obesity and Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Journal of Insurance and Finance
2010, 21(1), pp.143-185
Publisher : Korea Insurance Research Institute
Research Area : Social Science > Business Management

김대환 ¹

¹보험연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The rising prevalence of obesity may represent a substantial drain on employer-provided health care benefits. This study addresses whether obesity status affects a probability of employees’obtaining jobs that offer health insurance. Using two sub-samples (household heads and individuals who never married) from the 2003 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we analyze men and women separately. We use a logit model to analyze the effect of workers’obesity status on the chance of having employer-provided health insurance and then utilize a non-linear decomposition technique that uses estimated coefficients from a sample of the non-obese to simulate the distribution of the obese employees. We find consistent results for the subsample of household heads and never married workers: obesity is negatively related to the prevalence of insurance for women, but not for men. Utilizing decomposition technique, we find that obesity sorts females into jobs that tend not to provide employment-based health insurance; however, no significant job-sorting effect of obesity for males is found.

KEYWORDS

body mass index, employer-sponsored, health insurance, logit, non-linear decomposition, obesity

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.

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