Doug, I thought that many of the self employed are very young, and thus probably healthy. For many of them health insurance is not big deal. Young people often do not expect to get hurt or sick.
On Fri, Jun 08, 2001 at 01:57:15PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8316>
>
> The Self-Employed are Less Likely to Have Health Insurance Than Wage
> Earners. So What?
> Craig William Perry, Harvey S. Rosen
>
>
> NBER Working Paper No. W8316
> Issued in June 2001
>
>
> ---- Abstract -----
>
>
> There is considerable public policy concern over the relatively low
> rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the
> United States. Presumably, the reason for the concern is that their
> low rates of insurance lead to worse health outcomes. We use data
> from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey conducted in 1996 to
> analyze how the self-employed and wage-earners differ with respect to
> insurance coverage and health status. Using a variety of ways to
> measure health status, we find that the relative lack of health
> insurance among the self-employed does not affect their health. For
> virtually every subjective and objective measure of health status,
> the self-employed and wage earners are statistically
> indistinguishable from each other. Further, we present some evidence
> that this phenomenon is not due to the fact that individuals who
> select into self-employment are healthier than wage-earners, ceteris
> paribus. Thus, the public policy concern with the relative lack of
> health insurance among the self-employed may be somewhat misplaced.
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu