Welfare Reform and the Uninsured

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

There has been very little research on rates of health insurance coverage among the population likely to have been affected by PRWORA. This paper seeks to document trends in public and private health insurance coverage for economically vulnerable women between 1988 and 1998. It also seeks to determine the impact of welfare reform on those trends. The data for the analysis come from the annual March income supplements to the CPS; the May 1988 and April 1993 Employee Benefit Supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS); and the February 1995, February 1997, and February 1999 Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplements to the CPS.