Do Children of Immigrants Make Differential Use of Public Health Insurance?

Medicaid is one of the most costly welfare programs available to immigrants. This paper uses data from the 1989 to 1992 National Health Interview Survey to compare the effects of Medicaid eligibility on public and private health insurance coverage and on the utilization of medical services among children of natives and children of immigrants. I find that other things being equal, recent expansions of eligibility had negligible effects on Medicaid coverage among immigrants, although coverage rose among children of natives. Among immigrants in border states, eligibility was also associated with declines in private health insurance coverage. But becoming eligible increased the probability that a child had a doctor's visit in the past 12 months more for immigrants than non-immigrants. These results suggest that although Medicaid expansions caused some shifting of costs from private to public insurers in border states, they drew many previously unserved immigrant children into basic health care