Immigration Relief and Insurance Coverage: Evidence from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

Bae Jung ()
Additional contact information
Bae Jung: Department of Economics, Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences, 2825 Neil Ave, Apt 815, Columbus, OH, 43210-1326, USA

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2020, vol. 20, issue 3, 37

Abstract: I find that the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which conferred protection from deportation and work authorization to undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the U.S. as children, increased eligible immigrants’ likelihood of having health insurance coverage. Exploiting a cutoff rule in the eligibility criteria of DACA, I implement a difference-in-regression-discontinuities design. The insured rate increased by up to 4.3 percentage points more for DACA-eligible immigrants than for ineligible immigrants following DACA. Two-thirds of this increase is accounted for by upticks in employer-sponsored and privately purchased insurance. The findings are also consistent with immigrants becoming less averse to approach health institutions, and taking up medical financial assistance at a higher rate.

Keywords: undocumented immigrants; deferred action for childhood arrivals; health insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2019-0305 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:20:y:2020:i:3:p:37:n:6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2019-0305

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().