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Abstract
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.