Absence of conflict of interest.
Highlights
- The study's objective was to examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate on part-time employment in the retail and accommodation and food services (RAF) industries.
- The authors used a difference-in-differences study design to estimate the impacts of the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate on part-time employment in RAF industries, using data from the Current Population Survey. They used a statistical model to compare part-time employment in RAF industries over time in Hawaii to the rest of the United States, before and after the mandate went into effect.
- The study found a positive statistically significant relationship between the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate and part-time employment in RAF industries.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is moderate because it was based on a well-implemented non-experimental design. This means we are somewhat confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate, but other factors might also have contributed.
Intervention Examined
Features of the Intervention
Enacted in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to increase healthcare access, reduce costs, and improve health insurance coverage for Americans. The employer mandate, a key provision of the ACA, went into effect on January 1, 2016, and required that employers with at least 50 full-time-equivalent employees offer affordable health insurance that met minimum coverage standards to full-time employees. This mandate raised concerns about potential shifts in employment practices. Employers could respond by reducing employees’ hours or converting full-time positions to part-time. This could minimize employer healthcare costs by avoiding the obligation to provide insurance to full-time employees and incentivize employers to avoid penalties associated with not providing insurance.
Features of the Study
The authors used a difference-in-differences study design to estimate the impacts of the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate on part-time employment. The study sample included wage and salary workers aged 18-64 in the United States in the retail and accommodation and food services (RAF) industries. The authors used wage and salary workers in RAF industries in Hawaii as the comparison group and wage and salary workers in RAF industries in the rest of the United States as the treatment group. Hawaii's 1974 Prepaid Health Care Act required all private-sector employers to provide health insurance to employees working more than 20 hours per week. Because of this prior mandate, the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate was unlikely to affect part-time employment in Hawaii.
The authors used data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPS is a monthly household survey that covers around 60,000 households. In addition to worker demographics and job characteristics, the CPS has information on weekly hours worked and reasons for working part-time. The authors used a statistical model to compare part-time employment over time in Hawaii to the rest of the United States before and after the ACA employer mandate went into effect.
Findings
Employment
- The study found that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate led to a statistically significant 2.32 percentage point increase in the probability of workers in RAF industries working less than 30 hours per week.
- The study found that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate led to a statistically significant 3.04 percentage point increase in the probability of workers in RAF industries working less than or equal to 30 hours per week.
- The study found that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate led to a statistically significant 1.82 percentage point increase in the probability of workers in RAF industries involuntarily working less than 30 hours per week.
- The study found that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate led to a statistically significant 2.50 percentage point increase in the probability of workers in RAF industries involuntarily working less than or equal to 30 hours per week.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
The study authors estimated multiple related impacts on outcomes related to employment. Performing multiple statistical tests on related outcomes makes it more likely that some impacts will be found statistically significant purely by chance and not because they reflect program effectiveness. The authors did not perform statistical adjustments to account for the multiple tests, so the number of statistically significant findings in these domains may be overstated.