Bridget Lavelle's poster a winner at 2010 PAA

Bridget Lavelle, a PSC trainee in the joint Public Policy-Sociology doctoral program, was a poster session winner at the 2010 PAA Annual Meeting. Her poster was entitled “Divorce and Women’s Risk of Health Insurance Loss.”

ABSTRACT: The full scope of the economic consequences of marital disruption may be broader than previous studies suggest, extending beyond monetary resources to health insurance coverage. Little is known about how marital transitions affect health insurance coverage. This study focuses on the linkages between divorce and women’s risk of health insurance loss, because women are nearly twice as likely as men to be insured as dependents, often on a spouse’s insurance policy. To enhance our understanding of health insurance dynamics and the economic consequences of divorce in the U.S., this project analyzes monthly marital histories and health insurance experiences of nonelderly women in the large nationally representative Survey of Income and Program Participation. Fixed-effects models are estimated to examine to what extent and for what length of time divorce jeopardizes women’s health insurance coverage, and what factors moderate this risk