The effect of health insurance coverage on the reported health of young adults

•We exploit the abrupt change in the likelihood of health insurance coverage at age 19.•At age 19, we find a discontinuous decrease in the likelihood of reporting excellent health.•The decrease in excellent health is consistent with an increase in reporting very good health.•Other margins of self-reported health do not seem to be affected.

We exploit a sharp change in the likelihood that an individual is covered by health insurance when he/she turns 19 years of age to study how health insurance affects reported health status. We find that an individual is 6 percentage points less likely to have health insurance when he/she turns 19. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that having health coverage significantly increases the likelihood of reporting excellent health among young adults.