Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
According to a recent paper by Stephens and Toohey (2022), the answer is ‘yes’. This paper examines the labor market effects of a randomized health intervention of working-age men that was focused on reducing mortality due to coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. MRFIT succeeded in improving the health…
A study by Glied, Ma and Pearlstein (2015) says the answer is no. High worker wages are a reasonable place to start for explaining why US healthcare costs are so much higher than other countries as about half of healthcare spending is spent worker compensation. The study by Glied, Ma and Pearlstein does find that:…
More capable workers typically do have the best working conditions. The theory of compensating differentials, however, says that workers should be compensated in the form of higher wages for job amenities. So why is this the case empirically? Today, I review the Hanbook of Labor Economics chapter by Sherwin Rosen titled “The Theory of Equalizing…
Many economists have lamented that income inequality has grown over recent decades. Although it is true that wage inequality has increased, compensation inequality may not have. When I mention “compensation inequality,” I refer to the total package of compensation that a worker receives. This includes wages, health insurance, 401(k) benefits, and other non-wage forms of…
Does marriage cause men’s wages to rise? This is the question addressed by UCSD professor Kate Antonovics and Robert Town in their 2004 paper in AER cleverly titled “Are all the good men married?” It has been shown that married men earn more money than non-married men with similar characteristics. Why is this? A few…
Many economists have noted that wage growth has not kept up with overall economic growth over the past few decades. We observe widening wage inequality since the 1970s. Are workers getting poorer relative to the owners of capital? Is a communist revolution needed to equalize the playing field? Economist Martin Feldstein thinks not. “Feldstein…
Gruber (1994) shows that the costs of employer-provided health insurance benefits are passed on to employees through lower wages. But do employees with higher expected medical expenses have their wages reduced by a higher amount to reflect the additional medical costs to employers? This may not be the case if employers can not observe the…