Immigrant women and Medicaid-financed births

Masanori Kuroki

Demographic Research, 2018, vol. 39, issue 31, 871-882

Abstract: Background: While immigrants’ propensity to use social programs has been extensively examined by researchers, whether immigrant women are more likely to use Medicaid for birth delivery than US-born women is understudied, and discussion on fiscal costs of immigration should include Medicaid-financed births among immigrants. Objective: This study documents Medicaid-financed births by dividing the sample based on age, education levels, and marital status and calculating the extent of Medicaid-financed births for each sociodemographic group, paying special attention to the difference between US-born women and immigrant women. Methods: Cross-sectional data on 11,451,478 women come from the 2014–2016 Natality Detail dataset compiled by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Results: Overall, immigrant women are more likely than US-born women to report using Medicaid for birth delivery. However, among unmarried high school dropouts, married teenage high school dropouts, and unmarried teenage high school graduates, US-born women are more likely to use Medicaid for birth delivery than their immigrant counterparts. Conclusions: Considerable heterogeneity in the likelihood of Medicaid-financed births by age, education, and marital status highlights the importance of not bundling all immigrant women together to better identify subgroups with higher Medicaid-financed births. Contribution: This paper extends the literature on fiscal costs of immigration in the United States by focusing on Medicaid, which is an important source of financing for births for low-income women and families.

Keywords: births; immigrants; medicare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:39:y:2018:i:31

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2018.39.31

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