Jeffrey Rous wrote: > When I was in grad school, my wife's health insurance policy through > work allowed an employee to add a spouse for $1000 per year (I cannot > remember the exact numbers, but these are close) or add a spouse and > children for $2000 per year. And it didn't matter whether you had 1 > child or 10. > > Since she worked for UNC, I figured it was a political decision.
I'm pretty sure that it's not. My wife's private insurance works the same way. Unless regulations make the private sector copy the public sector.
> How can this be rational?
At least for male employees, it's plausible that those with more children are both older and therefore more experienced, and more responsible/stable holding age constant. A guy with five kids is going to be very concerned about remaining employed.
> -Jeffrey Rous > > > >
-- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The game of just supposing
Is the sweetest game I know... And if the things we dream about
Don't happen to be so,
That's just an unimportant technicality."Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, *Showboat*
