Volume 25, Number 4 (Fall) 1990
Leibowitz, Arleen. 1990. "The Response of Births to Changes in Health Care Costs." Journal of Human Resources 25(4):697-711.
Data from a randomized controlled trial, The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, provide the opportunity to examine whether an exogenous short-term change in the cost of medical care affects fertility in a cross-section of women. Women randomly assigned to receive free medical care for three to five years had 29 percent more births than women who were assigned to insurance plans requiring cost-sharing for health services. This response to changes in health insurance suggests that loss of insurance coverage during recessions may attenuate the effect of lower time prices in increasing birth rates in economics downturns.
The author is a researcher at RAND corporation. This research was funded by the Department of Health and Human Services under the Health Insurance Study grant (016B80). The author is indebted to the participants of the Labor and Population Workshop at the RAND Corporation and to two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful and constructive suggestions.
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