Which States Enroll Their Medicaid‐ Eligible, Citizen Children with Immigrant Parents?

Objective

To identify which states achieve comparable enrollment rates for edicaid‐eligible, citizen children with immigrant and nonimmigrant parents.

Data Source

A total of 810,345 edicaid‐eligible, citizen children drawn from the 2008–2010 merican ommunity urvey.

Study Design

This study estimates a state fixed‐effects probit model of uninsured status for edicaid‐eligible, citizen children. State and immigrant family interaction variables test whether citizen children in immigrant families have a higher probability of remaining uninsured compared to children in nonimmigrant families. Simulations predict the uninsured rates for edicaid eligible children in immigrant and nonimmigrant families and rank states by the differences between the two groups.

Principal Findings

While some states have insignificant and near zero differences in predicted uninsured rates, many states have enrollment disparities reaching 20 percent points between citizen children with immigrant and nonimmigrant parents.

Conclusions

Many states have large differences in enrollment rates between their edicaid‐eligible, citizen children with immigrant and nonimmigrant parents. Addressing these enrollment disparities could improve the health status of citizen children in immigrant families and earn hildren's ealth nsurance rogram eauthorization ct bonus payments for many states.