Eligibility Recertification and Dynamic Opt-In Incentives in Income-Tested Social Programs: Evidence from Medicaid/CHIP

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pei, Zhuan
• 署名单位: Cornell University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20130271
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 241-276
• 关键词: health-insurance; LABOR; PARTICIPATION; coverage; CHILDREN; welfare; care

摘要

Conventional labor supply studies assume constant eligibility monitoring of income-tested program participants, but the time between two consecutive eligibility certifications (the recertification period) can be as long as a year for Medicaid /CHIP recipients. In this paper, I study the optimal recertification period for this population. A long recertification period, while reducing monitoring costs, is predicted to induce program participation via temporary income adjustments. However, I find no support for this prediction using the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation. Given this, I propose a simple framework to compute the optimal recertification period and find 12 months to be its lower bound.