Health Insurance Patterns and Health in Young Adulthood

• In Event: 41021 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 10: Health and Illness

Abstract

The transition to adulthood is filled with instability, and this goes for health insurance coverage, too. Yet, most of our focus on health insurance has been on current status and its effects. We know less about how patterns of insurance during the front-third of the life course matter for health. The current study extends what has been done by looking at patterns of insurance coverage across the transition to adulthood and their association with multiple dimensions of health— self-reported health, mental health flourishing, and self-reported diagnoses. To test these associations, I will conduct sequence analysis through STATA using the Transition to Adulthood Supplement (ages 18-28) from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. To capture individuals in the transition to adulthood’s experiences with health insurance status/ type, I analyze the three waves of responses, put them into a sequence, and align them according to year. These sequences are beneficial to describing patterns because they allow for an ordered record of the fit between each respondents’ insurance status (dis)continuity. I find that the most common pattern across the transition to adulthood is unstable continuous insurance, meaning there is instability in the type of that coverage. Subsequent analyses will consider how these patterns matter for health.

Author

• Kathleen D'Alfonso, University at Buffalo