The Effect of Health Insurance Coverage on Homeownership and Housing Prices: Evidence from the Medicaid Expansion

Abstract

ObjectiveHomeownership as a way of wealth accumulation is important for low‐income people and the U.S. government has implemented policy to encourage homeownership among low‐income people. This article investigates the effects of health insurance coverage among low‐income people on homeownership and house prices.MethodsTo estimate the causal effects of health insurance coverage, we exploit the Medicaid expansion provisions of the Affordable Care Act as a source of exogenous variation in health insurance coverage and use it as an instrumental variable.ResultsUsing county‐level data from 2010 to 2018, this study finds that an increase in health insurance coverage among low‐income people results in an increase in homeownership rates and housing prices for bottom‐tier houses, and the results are robust.ConclusionOur study provides new evidence in supporting that higher shares of population with health insurance could increase both homeownership and house prices.