The Effect of Child Health Insurance Access on Schooling: Evidence from Public Insurance Expansions

TLDR

Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short‑run health outcomes, little prior work has examined their long‑term effects. The study examines the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. The analysis uses public insurance expansions in the 1980s and 1990s as a natural experiment to assess educational outcomes. Expanding health insurance coverage for low‑income children increases high‑school and college completion rates, with robust results driven mainly by expansions occurring when children are not newborns, indicating substantial long‑run benefits.

Abstract

Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short-run health outcomes, little prior work has examined their long-term effects. We examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. We find that expanding health insurance coverage for low-income children increases the rate of high school and college completion. These estimates are robust to only using federal Medicaid expansions and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are not newborns. Our results indicate that the long-run benefits of public health insurance are substantial.