Abstract

This paper investigates whether less generous insurance coverage for mental health care impacts economic productivity through reduced mental health investment. We evaluate a health insurance reform in the Netherlands which led to exogenous variation in patient cost sharing for mental health care. We construct a data set that links at the individual level administrative data on the mental health care claims records of all residents of the Netherlands to administrative data on employment. Our results indicate that the potential reduction in moral hazard under less generous insurance came at the expense of reductions in employment for certain identifiable subpopulations.