2009 Small Grants Competition: Immigration and Poverty
Funded research
Kelly S. Mikelson, Assistant Professor
School of Social Work and the Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
Erin Hamilton, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, University of California at Davis
Estimating the Impact of SCHIP Policies on the Insurance Coverage and Health of Young Children in Immigrant Families
Description
The State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is an important part of federal and state policy efforts to mitigate the impact of poverty on children’s health and to eliminate health disparities by providing state- and federally-subsidized health insurance to children in low-income families. Eleven years after SCHIP’s enactment, six million low-income children remained uninsured, most of whom are eligible for SCHIP. Among these numbers, children of immigrants are disproportionately represented, as they are twice as likely to be uninsured as children of natives. The broad aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which SCHIP is effectively meeting its goals of mediating the impact of poverty on child health and reducing health disparities, particularly with respect to children of immigrants. The specific aims of this study are to investigate whether variation in state-level SCHIP policies, including the timing of SCHIP implementation, eligibility guidelines, and outreach efforts, impact and explain disparities in child health insurance coverage, family medical hardship, and child health outcomes between children of immigrant parents and children of native-born parents. We propose to use birth cohort panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) linked to state-level data on SCHIP policies. Because the FFCWS follows children who were born between 1998 and 2000 through three interviews during the first five years of their lives, we will use longitudinal methods to estimate how variation in the timing of implementation and annual changes in state SCHIP policies affect child health insurance take-up, medical hardship, and child health outcomes over time in immigrant and non-immigrant families. The findings of this study will inform policy-makers of the specific regulations that can be changed to reach the mutual goals of mitigating the impact of poverty on child health and reducing health disparities.
