Abstract
Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short-run health outcomes, little prior work has examined their long-term effects. We examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. We find that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children increases the rate of high school and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are not newborns. Our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.
- Received October 2014.
- Accepted April 2015.
This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.
Log in using your username and password
Purchase access
In this issue
Jump to section
Related Articles
Cited By...
- State Approaches to Simplify Medicaid Eligibility and Implications for Inequality of Infant Health
- Investing in Health and Public Safety: Childhood Medicaid Eligibility and Later Life Criminal Behavior
- Medicaid Benefit Generosity and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Medicaid Adult Vision Benefits
- The Long-Term Effects of Early Life Medicaid Coverage
- Saving Teens: Using a Policy Discontinuity to Estimate the Effects of Medicaid Eligibility