Public insurance and marital outcomes: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansions

Public insurance may disincentivize marriage, but for whom? Using the American Community Survey, we find that an increased likelihood of Medicaid eligibility owing to the Affordable Care Act reduces marriage rates, particularly among people with higher education levels. We develop a search model of the marriage market that shows that those with a high expected financial surplus from marriage respond more to public insurance, as it provides an outside option against financial risk. These findings suggest a new hypothesis for the marriage gap across the socioeconomic spectrum: a larger material surplus from marriage increases willingness to marry, even with lower match quality.