Immigrants and the use of preventive care in the United States

Yuriy Pylypchuk and Julie Hudson
Additional contact information
Yuriy Pylypchuk: Social and Scientific Systems, Rockville, MD, USA, Postal: Social and Scientific Systems, Rockville, MD, USA
Julie Hudson: Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD, USA, Postal: Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD, USA

Health Economics, 2009, vol. 18, issue 7, pages 783-806

Abstract: Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we compare immigrants' use of preventive care with that of natives. We employ a multinomial switching regression framework that accounts for non-random selection into continuous private insurance, temporary private insurance, public insurance, and no insurance. Our results indicate that among the populations with continuous private coverage and without coverage (uninsured), immigrants, especially non-citizens, are less likely to use preventive care than natives. We find that the longer immigrants stay in the US the more their use of care approximates to that of natives. However, for most types of care, immigrants' use of care never fully converges to that of natives. Among the publicly insured population, immigrants' use of care is similar to natives, but non-citizen immigrants are significantly less likely to use preventive measures. We find that the ability to speak English does not have a significant effect on the use of preventive care among publicly insured persons. Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2009
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/hec.1401 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:18:y:2009:i:7:p:783-806

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().