Spousal Labor Market Effects from Government Health Insurance: Evidence from a Veterans Affairs Expansion

affect household labor supply choices, and (4) that the two populations would not
trend differentially in the absence of a policy change due to unobservable factors.

Table 1 presents summary statistics demonstrating that the veteran and
non-veteran samples are reasonably comparable in the pre-period. The average
veteran is more educated, and slightly more likely to have employer-provided
health insurance than the average non-veteran. As would be expected with
assortative mating, wives of veterans are also somewhat more educated than
wives of non-veterans. Because wives of veterans are slightly older than wives of
non-veterans in the pre-period, and the age composition of veterans compared to
non-veterans is changing over time, it is important to include controls for wife’s
age in all specifications. Wives of veterans are more likely to be not working than
those of non-veterans in the pre-period sample. National Health Interview Survey
calculations available in Boyle and Lahey (2010) demonstrate that there are no
differences in health between veterans and non-veterans in the pre-period for the
cohorts examined in this study.

Assumption (2) is valid because non-veterans and their spouses were not
affected by the VA insurance expansion. Although some veterans already had
access to VA health insurance, it was much less comprehensive than the coverage
post-expansion, so those individuals are still substantially impacted by the change.
Using textbook definitions of insurance, veterans were insured once VA coverage

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