Measuring the Impact of Health Insurance on Levels and Trends.pdf

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES MEASURING THE IMPACT OF HEALTH INSURANCE ON LEVELS AND TRENDS IN INEQUALITY Richard V. Burkhauser Kosali I. Simon Working Paper 15811 /papers/w15811 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 March 2010 This paper was funded in part by the Pew Charitable Trust- Economic Mobility Project. Any opinions expressed in this paper are solely the authors’ and should not necessarily be attributed to the National Bureau of Economic Research or the Pew Charitable Trust. We thank Scott Winship for valuable advice at all stages of the project, and Jeff Larrimore for research assistance. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2010 by Richard V. Burkhauser and Kosali I. Simon. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Measuring the Impact of Health Insurance on Levels and Trends in Inequality Richard V. Burkhauser and Kosali I. Simon NBER Working Paper No. 15811 March 2010 JEL No. I11,I32 ABSTRACT A substantial part of the inequality literature in the United States has focused on yearly levels and trends in income and its distribution over time. Recent findings in that literature show that median income appears to be stagnating with income growth pri