In this study, we test for the impact of the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage expansion on the career choices of young college graduates with majors in the arts in the United States. Since working as an artist often involves employment arrangements like self-employment and project-based work that lack health insurance coverage, policies that expand access to health insurance have the potential to make employment in the arts more attractive for arts graduates. Using American Community Survey data, we use a difference-in-differences regression approach comparing the likelihood of working in the arts for college graduates with majors in the arts who are just under- and just over-26, pre- and post-implementation of the ACA’s dependent coverage expansion. We find that the ACA increased the likelihood that arts graduates under 26 years of age were working in the arts by over 2% points, effects that are statistically significant and large as less than 20% of arts graduates in our sample work in the arts. Such changes are not observed for other graduates, suggesting that this response is unique to arts graduates, who are often found to behave differently than other workers.

在这项研究中，我们测试了平价医疗法案的家属覆盖范围扩大对美国艺术专业年轻大学毕业生职业选择的影响。由于艺术家的工作通常涉及自营职业和缺乏健康保险覆盖的项目工作等就业安排，因此扩大健康保险覆盖范围的政策有可能使艺术就业对艺术毕业生更具吸引力。使用美国社区调查数据，我们使用双重差分回归方法，比较了大学毕业生与 26 岁以下和 26 岁以上的艺术专业毕业生在实施之前和之后从事艺术工作的可能性。 ACA 的受抚养人覆盖范围扩大。我们发现，ACA 使 26 岁以下的艺术毕业生从事艺术工作的可能性增加了 2% 以上，这种影响在统计上是显着的，而且在我们的样本工作中，只有不到 20% 的艺术毕业生从事艺术工作。其他毕业生没有观察到这种变化，这表明这种反应是艺术毕业生所特有的，他们的行为往往与其他工人不同。