Are the costs of employer-sponsored health insurance passed on to workers at the individual level?

Lennon, Conor

doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2021.100995

“…The estimate for τ h has been stable in recent years at a level close to 10%. 21 Finally, we use a value of ϕ = 0.65 building on estimates from Gruber and Krueger (1991), Goldman et al (2005) and Lennon (2019), which suggest that one dollar of spending on benefits is valued on average at 65 cents by households. This increases our estimates for τ by 3%.…”

Section: Effective Taxes On Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?

Acemoğlu¹,

Manera²,

Restrepo³

2020

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

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We argue that the US tax system is biased against labor and in favor of capital and has become more so in recent years. As a consequence, it has promoted inefficiently high levels of automation. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to optimal taxation of capital and labor would raise employment by 4.02% and the labor share by 0.78 percentage points, and restore the optimal level of automation. If moving to optimal taxes is infeasible, more modest reforms can still increase employment by 1.14-1.96%, but in this case efficiency can be increased by imposing an additional automation tax to reduce the equilibrium level of automation. This is because marginal automated tasks do not bring much productivity gains but displace workers, reducing employment below its socially optimal level. We additionally show that reducing labor taxes or combining lower capital taxes with automation taxes can increase employment much more than the uniform reductions in capital taxes enacted between 2000 and 2018.

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“…The estimate for τ h has been stable in recent years at a level close to 10%. 21 Finally, we use a value of ϕ = 0.65 building on estimates from Gruber and Krueger (1991), Goldman et al (2005) and Lennon (2019), which suggest that one dollar of spending on benefits is valued on average at 65 cents by households. This increases our estimates for τ by 3%.…”

Section: Effective Taxes On Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?

Acemoğlu¹,

Manera²,

Restrepo³

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We argue that the US tax system is biased against labor and in favor of capital and has become more so in recent years. As a consequence, it has promoted inefficiently high levels of automation. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to optimal taxation of capital and labor would raise employment by 4.02% and the labor share by 0.78 percentage points, and restore the optimal level of automation. If moving to optimal taxes is infeasible, more modest reforms can still increase employment by 1.14-1.96%, but in this case efficiency can be increased by imposing an additional automation tax to reduce the equilibrium level of automation. This is because marginal automated tasks do not bring much productivity gains but displace workers, reducing employment below its socially optimal level. We additionally show that reducing labor taxes or combining lower capital taxes with automation taxes can increase employment much more than the uniform reductions in capital taxes enacted between 2000 and 2018.

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Did the affordable care act increase the availability of employer‐sponsored health insurance?

Lennon

¹

2021

Southern Economic Journal

5

0

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The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) included two provisions, the Employer Shared Responsibility Provision (the “employer mandate”) and the Small Business Health Options Program (“SHOP”), aimed at increasing the availability of employer‐sponsored health insurance (ESI) among workers at small firms. To examine whether these provisions led to greater ESI availability, I use 2011–2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data in a difference‐in‐difference framework that compares changes in ESI availability among workers at small and large firms before and after the ACA's provisions come into effect. My estimates show that there is a 3.5 percentage point increase in ESI availability among workers at smaller firms after 2013. When focusing on workers most likely to be affected by the employer mandate, I find a larger 5.2 percentage point increase in ESI availability, amounting to a 39% decline in the proportion who do not have ESI available. However, I find no evidence that greater ESI availability led to increases in ESI coverage rates. Instead, descriptive estimates suggest that gains in health insurance coverage after 2013 consist of significant increases in the number of working adults who report having Medicaid coverage, including among workers who are offered ESI. I use MEPS data for my analysis because, along with employment, firm size, and health insurance details, MEPS also provides health status and healthcare access/utilization information. Looking at changes in these health measures, I find only limited evidence to suggest that the ACA's provisions improved access to care or measures of health status for workers.

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Are the costs of employer-sponsored health insurance passed on to workers at the individual level?

Cited by 4 publications

References 49 publications

Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?

Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?

Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?

Did the affordable care act increase the availability of employer‐sponsored health insurance?

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