Same-sex marriage and health insurance coverage decisions by employers

National Bureau Of Economic Research, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY We provide new evidence on the effects of legal access to same-sex marriage on employer decisions about health insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners of employees. No prior work has used high quality employer surveys such as those we propose to use here: the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance Component has asked over 40,000 public and private employers about same-sex domestic partner health benefits since 2013. Together with restricted access to geolocation of the employer, we will examine how the rollout of legal access to same-sex marriage affected decisions about these benefits, and we will examine whether employer characteristics such as firm size or industry are systematically related to the effects of legal same-sex marriage on these employer decisions.