Same-sex marriage and health insurance coverage decisions by employers

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R21 · $157,038 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

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.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10464687
Project number
1R21MD017113-01A1
Recipient
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
Principal Investigator
CHRISTOPHER S. CARPENTER
Activity code
R21
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$157,038
Award type
1
Project period
2022-08-07 → 2024-04-30