Is Welfare Reform Responsible for Low-Skilled Women’s Declining Health Insurance Coverage in the 1990s?

Thomas DeLeire, Michigan State University
Judith A. Levine, University of Chicago
Helen Levy, University of Michigan

We use data from the 1989-2001 March Supplements to the Current Population Survey to determine whether welfare reform contributed to the declines in health insurance coverage experienced by low-skilled women over this period. During the 1990s, women with less than a high school education experienced a 10.1 percentage point decline in the probability of having health insurance. Against this backdrop of large overall declines in coverage, welfare waivers were associated with a modest, 1.8 percentage point, increase in coverage for low-skilled women by increasing their probability of having private health insurance, while Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) itself had no statistically significant effect. Overall, welfare reform did not contribute to declines in coverage but rather offset them somewhat. Unfortunately, some groups among low-skilled women did not experience these relative gains in coverage in response to reforms including non-employed women, African-American women, unmarried women, and unmarried women with children.