Employees are compensated not just in wages but may also receive a range of employee benefits. In the United States, health insurance coverage is an important benefit offered by many employers. The gender gap in employee benefits such as employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) has been understudied as most research on the male-female wage gap studies differences in earnings only. Thus, the differences in the totality of compensation, including as employer-sponsored health coverage and employer contributions to health insurance merits further study.

This paper uses the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) data from 2019 and Oaxaca-Binder decomposition to decompose differences in employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) coverage by gender and marital status. Furthermore, this paper leverages survey questions about the reasons an individual does not have ESI to explore the marginal effects of employer offering, eligibility for ESI, and individual take-up choice on outcomes.

Using a logit regression to estimate ESI, I find that both married and unmarried women have a lower take up rate than their male counterparts. However, while the lower take up among married women may be explained at the family level, the lower take up of unmarried women cannot. Results from Oaxaca-Binder decomposition reveal that differences in ESI between unmarried men and women can be explained by differences in endowments (such as age, education levels, and nativity). However, for married men and women, approximately eighty percent of the difference in ESI policyholding cannot be explained by differences in endowments. Adding in the value of health insurance benefits reduces the wage gap between unmarried men and women by approximately 29 percent.