The Impact of Health Insurance on Education: Did the Expansions of the Medicaid Program Improve Teenagers’ Educational Attainment?

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of public health insurance for pregnant women and young children on children’s educational attainment by exploiting the expansions of the Medicaid program during the period 1984-1997. I use data for current school enrollment and high school graduation status of teenagers between ages 16 and 18 in the American Community Survey for years 2000 through 2011. I then use the simulated Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women and young children in each state and year to estimate the effect of eligibility in early-life on the probability that a child drops out of school. The results show that eligibility in early childhood has significant effect on the educational attainment among whites, females and those whose mothers are high school graduates, but the effect is not significant among the disadvantaged group that is most likely to be targeted by Medicaid. Eligibility in utero, however, has fairly significant effect among the disadvantaged group targeted by Medicaid expansions.