# Same-sex marriage and health insurance coverage decisions by employers

> **NIH NIH R21** · NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH · 2022 · $157,038

## 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 organization:** NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
- **Principal Investigator:** CHRISTOPHER S. CARPENTER
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $157,038
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-08-07 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10464687

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10464687, Same-sex marriage and health insurance coverage decisions by employers (1R21MD017113-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10464687. Licensed CC0.

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