Does Getting Health Insurance Affect Women’s Fertility? Evidence from the United Mine Workers’ Health Insurance

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 511-515
Author(s):  
Erin Troland ◽  
Theodore F. Figinski
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Women Of Childbearing Age ◽  
Childbearing Age ◽  
Fertility Decisions ◽  
Insurance Program ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
United Mine ◽  
Mine Workers

Does health insurance affect fertility decisions? Fertility may increase if insurance lowers the costs of having a child. Fertility may decrease if children are more likely to survive into adulthood (quality-quantity tradeoff). We study a largely permanent United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) insurance program. A large group of women of childbearing age gained pregnancy coverage for the first time. The insurance also covered children. We use a trend break specification with county-level variation in insurance. We find new evidence of the quality-quantity tradeoff. Fertility rates declined by about one percent per year in counties with average levels of insurance.

Relocating Reproduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Brianna Theobald
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Postnatal Care ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Women Of Childbearing Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Childbearing Age ◽  
Native Women

This chapter considers the experiences of the thousands of Native women of childbearing age who migrated from reservations to cities in the decades following World War II. The federal government’s relocation program promoted the urban migration of Native individuals and families and provided basic assistance to facilitate the process. The chapter argues that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’s desired outcome of relocating women alongside men, as well as women’s own agency in pursuing relocation, forced the BIA to make adjustments to relocation policy to accommodate women’s reproductive needs. In cities, Native women navigated the bureaucracy of health insurance but often found that long-term coverage was out of reach. Native women relied on their own ingenuity and the support of familial and social networks both on and off reservations in their attempt to obtain adequate prenatal, obstetric, and postnatal care, as well as in negotiating urban motherhood.

“Judases”

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-92
Keyword(s):  
Gilded Age ◽  
Local Union ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
Union Decline ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
United Mine ◽  
Mine Workers

Chapter 3 examines the reasons that caused workers to leave or reject unions. Scholars normally associate union decline with workers disillusion with unionism. This chapter, however, argues that workers’ faith in unionism did not waver as much as their faith in union leaders did. As Gilded Age unions like the United Mine Workers implemented a more centralized hierarchy, local union autonomy waned. As a result, workers doubted whether union leaders made decisions with the workers’ interests in mind, and they left the union when it seemed their leaders went astray. Rather than abandoning unionism altogether, however, many of these individuals formed local unions that rivaled the national unions, indicating that workers had more problems with union leadership than they did with unionism itself.

Outsiders

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-118
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
United Mine Workers ◽  
United Mine ◽  
Mine Workers

This chapter discusses the problems within unions that caused union leadership to treat members differently from one another. It argues that although union leaders often claimed the unions were open to all races and ethnicities, the efforts they pursued favored white laborers over people of color. Stereotypes that associated black miners with strikebreaking and construed non-English-speaking immigrant miners as unintelligent and unskilled cast a shadow over union procedures and the laws unions fought to secure. Even though farmers and white women had less experience in the mines, these individuals were welcomed far more readily than black and immigrant workers who were often highly skilled in the mining trades. In the end, the exclusivity practiced by organizations like the United Mine Workers alienated nonwhite and non-English-speaking workers, giving these groups little reason to join union ranks

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