Covering Undocumented Immigrants: The Effects of a Large-Scale Prenatal Care Intervention

Sarah Miller and Laura Wherry

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public insurance coverage for prenatal care in most states, despite their children representing a large fraction of births and having U.S. citizenship. In this paper, we examine a policy that expanded Medicaid pregnancy coverage to undocumented immigrants. Using a novel dataset that links California birth records to Census surveys, we identify siblings born to immigrant mothers before and after the policy. Implementing a mothers' fixed effects design, we find that the policy increased coverage for and use of prenatal care among pregnant immigrant women, and increased average gestation length and birth weight among their children.

Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2022/CES-WP-22-28.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Covering Undocumented Immigrants: The Effects of a Large-Scale Prenatal Care Intervention (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:22-28

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