THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYER-PROVIDED HEALTH-INSURANCE ON WORKER MOBILITY

The authors use data from the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Partic ipation (SIPP) to investigate whether employer-provided health insuran ce reduced worker mobility (a phenomenon termed ''job-lock''). The SIP P provides information on variables-particularly pension receipt, job tenure, and spouse job change-that were omitted from previous studies and are, the authors argue, key to the estimation of well-defined mobi lity models. For dual-earner married men and women, the authors estima te a model that accounts for the interaction between husbands' and wiv es' job change decisions. For both married and single individuals, the results provide fairly strong evidence of job-lock among women, but o nly weak indications of job-lock among men. The authors speculate that this finding reflects higher health care use by women than by men.