Overview
Laura R. Wherry is a health economist at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her research focuses on the causal effects of public health insurance programs — particularly Medicaid — on health, mortality, and long-run outcomes across the life course.
Key Contributions / Features
- Miller, Johnson, and Wherry (2021) — NBER Working Paper 26081; first individual-level quasi-experimental evidence that ACA Medicaid expansion significantly reduced mortality among near-elderly low-income adults; linked ACS microdata (~566,000 individuals) to Census Numident death records and CMS Medicaid enrollment; found −0.132 pp annual mortality reduction (9.4%, growing to 11.9% by Year 3). See Medicaid and Mortality.
- Wherry and Miller (2016) — Annals of Internal Medicine 164(12): 795–803; quasi-experimental study of early ACA Medicaid expansion coverage, access, utilization, and health effects; one of the first rapid-evaluation papers on the ACA expansion wave.
- Earlier work on childhood Medicaid eligibility and long-run outcomes (Wherry et al., using Medicaid expansions from the 1980s–90s as natural experiments).
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