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The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of the recent Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Dependent Mandate (DM) that requires health insurers to extend dependent coverage to the children of their insured, up to age 26. The DM has the potential to free young persons from “job lock,” enabling them to engage in entrepreneurial activity. Using the American Community Survey, the authors analyze the change in self-employment for ages 18-25 relative to the implementation of the DM.

The authors approach the research question in a unique manner and in doing so, extend the literature. Employing national data, the authors focus on young adults impacted by the DM (those under the age of 26 may remain on their parents’ insurance). While the DM is a condition of the ACA, prior to its implementation several states had already passed their own such provision. The authors exploit this state-by-state variation in the methodology.

The authors find no evidence that the ACA has stimulated self-employment among all young adults. However, the authors determine that the DM has a positive and significant effect on the likelihood of students being self-employed. The result is even more pronounced when using a stricter definition of entrepreneurship, an incorporated business. Sub-group analyses show no evidence of a significant effect on entrepreneurship among young adults in other groups. The results remain after conducting various falsification tests.

The paper empirically addresses the commonly held belief that the ACA is creating new businesses via reduced job lock. Policy makers may wish to target other explanations of job lock rather than health insurance availability.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize job immobility concepts, e.g. staying in an unsatisfying job and perceiving limited opportunities to move and apply for another job. The existing literature on this situation of job immobility in which the employee is experiencing stuckness in the job is scattered across research domains, limited in scope and existing constructs are not clearly defined or operationalized.

In this conceptual paper, the authors propose the construct “locked at the job,” by reviewing and building on the job immobility literature and the theory of control and self-regulation.

This study defines the concept that consists of two dimensions as feeling dissatisfied in the current job and inactivity due to perceived limited job opportunities. This study proposes a conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of locked at the job, based on the person-environment fit theory.

This conceptual paper allows value to be added in practice by the conceptualization of locked at the job, in addition to providing a preview with respect to conceptual causes and consequences of this phenomenon.

Research on this job immobility phenomenon is scattered across different research domains, limited in scope and the concept has not been clearly defined or operationalized.

The paper seeks to empirically identify the theoretically ambiguous relationship between employer fringe benefit provision and worker job satisfaction.

Using the five most recent waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, both pooled cross‐section and fixed effects estimates explain the relationship between fringe benefits and job satisfaction. The potential endogenous relationship is also tested using a recursive bivariate probit procedure.

Fringe benefits are significant and positive determinants of job satisfaction. The potential endogeneity between fringe benefits and job satisfaction is not shown in this dataset while controlling for fixed effects does not remove the significant impact of fringe benefits.

A limitation is the inability to control for total compensation within the estimations and control for wage changes as a result of fringe benefit provision.

Higher levels of worker job satisfaction, potentially resulting from fringe benefit provisions, have been linked to important productivity measures such as lower quit rates and absenteeism.

The paper is the first to study the relationship between fringe benefits and job satisfaction in detail while additionally testing for the endogeneity of the relationship and controlling for fixed effects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the long-run impact of federal government healthcare subsidies on the level of entrepreneurship as measured by self-employment.

Using annual healthcare and employment data from 1948 through 1999, the paper empirically examines the relationship between the growth in employer-provided healthcare and the rate of self-employment as a share of the non-agriculture, civilian labor force.

The regression results imply that there is a consistent effect that has appeared over time – where federal healthcare subsidies have disproportionately benefitted larger firms, contributing to the decline in the rate of self-employment, within-firm innovation, and factor mobility over time.

The research in this study is limited by the examination of self-employment only and a constant institutional structure across all states, only varying across time for the entire USA. In addition, an empirical study looking at how the value of healthcare benefits have changed over time – vs the sole question in this study that depends upon whether or not an individual is covered or not would be very useful in determining the true effect on an entrepreneur.

Reducing or removing the layers of healthcare subsidies would bring about an increase in the transparency of the wage-productivity relationship and a more efficient allocation of labor and entrepreneurial ability across firm sizes.

This paper presents empirical evidence supporting specific improvements to national healthcare policy at a time when such policy is undergoing significant change with consequences for entrepreneurial decision making.

Since the implementation of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) in 2003, this program has experienced rapid growth. Even so, little is known about the association between NCMS expansion and labor force supply among rural residents in China. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the NCMS on labor force supply for rural Chinese populations.

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), a difference-in-differences (DD) approach is employed to estimate the impact of NCMS expansion on labor supply outcomes, including hours of worked in agriculture, off-farm labor force participation, not working, and weeks off due to illness. A number of falsification tests are conducted to identify whether the assumption of common trends of DD analyses is satisfied. The robustness of results is checked through additional estimation, including panel fixed effects and instrumental variable approach.

Results show that the NCMS expansion has a positive effect on the hours of worked in agriculture and off-farm labor force participation, and reduces the likelihood of not working and weeks off due to illness. The effect on hours of agricultural production is larger for male adults, those aged 50 or more, and individuals in low-income families. This study demonstrates the importance of potential health improvements from public health insurance in promoting rural residents’ labor productivity.

Studies concerning the effects of public health insurance on labor supply in developing countries remain limited. The findings of this study provide important insights into how public health insurance programs, like the NCMS, may affect patterns of labor supply among rural residents, and can help policymakers improve health policies aimed to reduce the number of uninsured farmers while maintaining high levels of labor supply, productivity, and health status among the most vulnerable of populations.

Economic security is one of the crucial dimensions of the welfare state. High-income individuals are able to purchase private insurance, but a large portion of the individuals remains uninsured. The authors have tried to rationalize the problem of the study over the reason why people remain uninsured. Hence, the purpose of the study is to identify an insurance model that can cover the risk of the heterogeneous segments. The study is qualitative in nature and applies a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). Based on seven criteria, process is applied to arrive at an alternative model among basic models of insurance, namely, conventional private insurance, mutual, and social insurance. Since social insurance has emerged with the highest score of 41% in the study, it is implied that social insurance works best in a situation where the market is full of private information and moral hazard. The findings reaffirm that government intervention is required in an insurance market to provide coverage to both covariate and idiosyncratic risks. The findings are especially relevant in the context of emerging markets where a sizeable poor population goes uninsured. The study contributes to the literature by proposing alternative insurance to address the problem of insuring the voluntarily uninsured.

Many employees experience a “locked at the job” situation and are not satisfied with their current job and at the same time, perceive limited job opportunities. This study examines the process that individuals who experience locked at the job go through and the coping mechanisms individuals use.

A total of Thirty in-depth interviews were conducted. Of the participants, 12 were locked at the job at the time of the interview and 18 participants experienced locked at the job in the past.

The authors identified three phases. Regarding the first phase “becoming locked at the job,” various individual and work environmental causes could be identified. In the second phase “being locked at the job,” the authors identified three levels: low-, medium- and high-locked individuals. Emotion-regulated coping strategies were mainly reappraisal, positive distraction and behavioral avoidance. The third phase “ending locked at the job” revealed that a locked at the job situation often comes to an end either by taking control independently or by external force. Especially, the role of the direct supervisor was decisive during the entire locked at the job process.

In the practical implications, the authors suggest to discuss locked at the job throughout the entire workplace and create an open culture acknowledging that individuals may find themselves in such a situation.

To date, no qualitative study has been conducted before from this perspective. Therefore, it is extremely important to look at this relatively unknown phenomenon from this perspective.

A dynamic model of the evolution of health for those over the age of 50 is embedded in a structural, econometric model of retirement and saving. Effects of smoking, obesity, alcohol consumption, depression, and other proclivities on medical conditions are analyzed, including hypertension, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, heart problems, stroke, psychiatric problems, and arthritis. Compared to a population in good health, the current health of the population reduces retirement age by about one year. Including detailed health dynamics in a retirement model does not influence estimates of the marginal effects of economic incentives on retirement.

The purpose of this paper is to document the changes in low- and moderate-income occupational licensing over time.

Using US state level data, the authors document the rise in occupational licensing for low- and moderate-income occupations over the 1993-2012 period.

States averaged 32 additional low- and moderate-income occupations licensed over this period. Louisiana added the most licenses with 59 new licenses for these occupations, while Oklahoma and Kentucky only added 15 licenses for these low- and moderate-income occupations.

These data have not been documented before and should provide useful for future research into occupational licensing.