Health Care Reform and Farm Women’s Off-Farm Labor Force Participation: Evidence from Taiwan

Do non-wage fringe benefits affect women’s off-farm work decisions? We test the impact of the 1995 introduction of universal National Health Insurance (NHI) in Taiwan on off-farm labor force participation (LFP) among farm wives. Our results, based on a difference-in- differences approach, indicate that employment-delinked NHI reduced farm wives’ off-farm LFP by 9.6 to 13.6 percentage points. The larger impact was for wives from small farm households. The health insurance reform had a larger negative impact on overall LFP among married women in agricultural households than in nonagricultural households.