Essays in Health and Labor Economics

This dissertation contains two chapters that examine the relationship between employer-sponsored health insurance and labor market outcomes and a third chapter that explores the determinants of risky sexual adolescent behaviors. Specifically, the first chapter analyzes the effect of rising health insurance costs on compensation and employment. The second chapter estimates the effect of making employee premium contributions tax free on wages and employee contribution amounts. The third chapter examines the effect of teen pregnancy on the sexual behavior of younger siblings.;In the first two chapters, I use data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS), which is a panel data set that provides information on compensation, health insurance coverage, hours worked, and employment for a sample of occupations within establishments across the U.S. These data are unique because they link compensation data with detailed information on health insurance plan participation, premium contribution amounts by both employers and employees, and the availability of a Section 125 plan that allows employees to make tax-free premium contributions. The first chapter uses the NCS data to estimate the extent to which establishments in the U.S. respond to rising health insurance costs by adjusting employee compensation and employment. The panel structure of the data allows me to analyze changes in compensation, employment, and health insurance costs within establishments over time. I find that establishments that offer health insurance reduce total compensation by ;The second chapter uses the NCS data to estimate the effect of allowing employees to make tax-free premium contributions on wages and employee premium contribution amounts. I use the panel structure of the data to analyze changes in employee premium contributions and wages in response to the introduction of a Section 125 plan while controlling for observed and unobserved establishment and plan characteristics. I also exploit state policy changes that require establishments to offer Section 125 plans as a source of exogenous variation. My findings indicate that introducing a Section 125 plan has little impact on wages or employee premium contributions. One possible explanation for these findings is that the annual tax savings due to the introduction of a Section 125 plan are too small to cause employers to adjust.;The third chapter, which is joint with Lisa B. Kahn, examines the effect of teen pregnancy on the sexual behavior of siblings. To identify this effect, we exploit the timing of the teen pregnancy by analyzing the change in sexual behavior just after the sibling's teen pregnancy compared to just before, relative to the change in behavior of a control group over the same time window. We also explore whether the sibling peer effects vary with the gender composition and age gap of the sibling pair. The data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our results show that after an older sibling's teen pregnancy, younger siblings are more likely to be sexually active, have more sexual partners and are more likely to have a teen pregnancy themselves. We find no effects on birth control use. These effects vary little by gender or by characteristics of the sibling pair. Our work suggests that sibling peer effects in sexual behavior are strong and these younger siblings could be a particularly well-targeted group for teen pregnancy prevention campaigns.