The Effect of ACA Medicaid Expansions on Foster Care Admissions

Louis-Philippe Beland, Jason Huh () and Dongwoo Kim
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Jason Huh: Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, https://faculty.rpi.edu/jason-huh

No 21-07, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recent papers have documented positive externalities of Medicaid expansions on several nonhealth related variables, such as crime, financial stress, child support, and child abuse. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between access to public health insurance and foster care admissions following state decisions to expand Medicaid coverage after the Affordable Care Act. Over 70 percent of all foster care admissions are related to child abuse incidents, which have been found to decrease following the Medicaid expansions. Our result suggests that the Medicaid expansions are associated with a large decrease in foster care admissions, driven by neglect incidents.

Keywords: Affordable Care Act; Health Insurance; Foster Care; Child Abuse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 I18 J13 K36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2021-08-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias, nep-law and nep-pke
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published: Carleton Economics Papers

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:car:carecp:21-07

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