TY  - JOUR
AU  - Levy,Helen
AU  - DeLeire,Thomas
TI  - What Do People Buy When They Don't Buy Health Insurance And What Does that Say about Why They are Uninsured?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9826
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9826
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9826.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Helen G. Levy
University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research - MI SQ 4119
426 Thompson St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 - 1248
Tel: 734/936 4506
Fax: 734/647 1186
E-Mail: hlevy@umich.edu

Thomas DeLeire
La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608-263-6998
Fax: 608/263-2820
E-Mail: deleire@wisc.edu
AB  - Using data from the 1994 through 1998 Consumer Expenditure Surveys, we compare household spending on 16 different goods (food at home, food away from home, housing, transportation, alcohol and tobacco, interest, furniture and appliances, home maintenance, clothing, utilities, medical care, health insurance, entertainment, personal care, education, and other) for insured versus uninsured households, controlling for total expenditures and demographic characteristics. The analysis shows that the uninsured in the lowest quartile of the distribution of total expenditures spend more on housing, food at home, alcohol and tobacco, and education than do the insured.  In contrast, households in the top quartile of the distribution of total expenditures spend more on transportation and furniture and appliances than do comparable insured households.  These results are consistent with the idea that poor uninsured households face higher housing prices than do poor insured households.  Further research is necessary to determine whether high housing prices can help explain why some households do not have insurance.
ER  -