PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Barkowski, Scott
AU  - McLaughlin, Joanne Song
TI  - In Sickness and in Health: Interaction Effects of State and Federal Health Insurance Coverage Mandates on Marriage of Young Adults
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.57.2.0118-9295R2
DP  - 2020 Mar 09
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/03/03/jhr.57.2.0118-9295R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/03/03/jhr.57.2.0118-9295R2.full
AB  - We study the interaction of state and federal dependent health insurance mandates on young adult marriages. Using a new dataset on state-level mandates, we show marriage restrictions of these laws reduced marriage likelihoods by about two percentage points. When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted, its mandate ended marriage restrictions, encouraging marriage among those previously eligible for state mandates. However, among those ineligible for state mandates, it discouraged marrying to obtain insurance through spouses. The combination of these contrasting ACA effects eliminated the marriage gap. We also find these marriage effects resulted in corresponding impacts on out-of-wedlock births.