TY - JOUR
T1 - Effects of parental public health insurance eligibility on parent and child health outcomes
AU - Gopalan, Maithreyi
AU - Lombardi, Caitlin Mc Pherran
AU - Bullinger, Lindsey Rose
N1 - Funding Information:
We analyze data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011), a nationally representative cohort of U.S. children who entered kindergarten in the fall of 2010. ECLS-K:2011 is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. Follow up data on children, parents, and teachers were done 1–2 times per year between 2011 and 2016. The ECLS-K:2011 provides significant strengths in answering the research questions; the data are nationally representative, were collected in multiple languages, and there is a sizable subsample of the population of interest, low-income families. The ECLS-K:2011 contains strong measurement with parent reports of parent health, child health, and child health care utilization, and direct assessments of children’s body mass index (BMI). Most importantly, there are several waves of data collected both before and after the ACA Medicaid expansions. Multiple studies have utilized the ECSL-K:2011 to study child and parent health ( Diep et al., 2017 ; Bednar and Rouse, 2020 ; von Hippel and Workman, 2016).
Funding Information:
We acknowledge the restricted-use data access and a seed grant provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development ( P2CHD041025 ), to Gopalan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - Many states expanded their Medicaid programs to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These expansions increased Medicaid coverage among low-income parents and their children. Whether these improvements in coverage and healthcare use lead to better health outcomes for parents and their children remains unanswered. We used longitudinal data on a large, nationally representative cohort of elementary-aged children from low-income households from 2010 to 2016. Using a difference-in-differences approach in state Medicaid policy decisions, we estimated the effect of the ACA Medicaid expansions on parent and child health. We found that parents’ self-reported health status improved significantly post-expansion in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA by 4 percentage points (p < 0.05), a 4.7% improvement. We found no significant changes in children's use of routine doctor visits or parents’ assessment of their children's health status. We observed modest decreases in children's body mass index (BMI) of about 2% (p < 0.05), especially for girls.
AB - Many states expanded their Medicaid programs to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These expansions increased Medicaid coverage among low-income parents and their children. Whether these improvements in coverage and healthcare use lead to better health outcomes for parents and their children remains unanswered. We used longitudinal data on a large, nationally representative cohort of elementary-aged children from low-income households from 2010 to 2016. Using a difference-in-differences approach in state Medicaid policy decisions, we estimated the effect of the ACA Medicaid expansions on parent and child health. We found that parents’ self-reported health status improved significantly post-expansion in states that expanded Medicaid through the ACA by 4 percentage points (p < 0.05), a 4.7% improvement. We found no significant changes in children's use of routine doctor visits or parents’ assessment of their children's health status. We observed modest decreases in children's body mass index (BMI) of about 2% (p < 0.05), especially for girls.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ehb.2021.101098
DO - 10.1016/j.ehb.2021.101098
M3 - Article
C2 - 34929550
AN - SCOPUS:85121285396
SN - 1570-677X
VL - 44
JO - Economics and Human Biology
JF - Economics and Human Biology
M1 - 101098
ER -