The labor market effects of national health insurance: evidence from Taiwan

Journal of Population Economics - Tập 22 - Trang 311-350 - 2007
Kamhon Kan1, Yen-Ling Lin2
1Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
2Department of Economics, National Cheng-Chi University, Taipei, Taiwan

Tóm tắt

This paper investigates the impacts of national health insurance on the labor market, by considering the case of Taiwan, which implemented national health insurance in March 1995. Taiwan’s national health insurance is financed by premiums, which are proportional to an employee’s salary. These premiums may introduce distortions to the labor market. Based on repeated cross-sections of individual data we find that, on average, private sector employees’ work hours declined relative to their public sector counterparts, whereas their relative wage rates were almost unchanged with the introduction of national health insurance. The results suggest that neither private sector employers nor their employees were able to shift their premium burden to each other.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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