By Caleb Taylor
Does the occupational licensing of nursing home administrators affect the quality of care of nursing home residents?
A forthcoming paper by ACRE Undergraduate Research Fellow Ryan Jackson and ACRE Economic Policy Analyst Alex Kanode examines this question.
Jackson is a part of ACRE’s Research Fellowship Program. In this program, students work with a professor or policy analyst to write a publishable research paper that is presented at the annual SOBIE conference on April 15-17 in Destin, Florida.
According to the abstract of the paper:
Every state licenses Nursing Home Administrators (NHA’s) but their requirements vary drastically. Some literature suggests that practitioners use occupational licensing to restrict supply within their industry. But proponents of licensing claim that these requirements protect the public. This paper attempts to find out whether differences in requirements for NHA’s have an effect on the care of nursing home residents. This paper estimates the variation in Medicare quality scores explained by the different licensing requirements.”
Jackson is from Pea Ridge, Arkansas. He is a senior majoring in Economics. After graduation, he plans to pursue a business career in Northwest Arkansas.
To see other measures of the burden of occupational licensing in Arkansas, look at this research paper entitled “The Effects of Arkansas Occupational Licensure Regulations” by UCA Associate Professor and ACRE Scholar Dr. Thomas Snyder. Snyder was a co-author of “The State of Occupational Licensing: Arkansas” with researchers from the Mercatus Center. This report gives an overview of occupational licensing in Arkansas and makes suggestions for reform.
For more on this topic, check out our labor market regulation research page.