Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
submittedVersion
Publication Date
2-2026
Abstract
Expanding public health insurance to parents may not only improve parental outcomes but also have spillover effects on their children. This paper leverages the natural experiment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to estimate the causal effects of expanding public health insurance to low-income parents on their well-being and that of their children. Using a difference-in-differences model and data from the 2010–2017 National Health Interview Surveys, we observe significant improvements in health care access, increased health care utilization, reduced financial burdens, and slight improvements in health status among low-income parents. For children in Medicaid expansion states, we find reductions in emergency care utilization and hospitalizations. These results highlight the short-term positive spillover effects of parental insurance coverage on children’s well-being, primarily through improved health care utilization.
Keywords
Medicaid, Parents, Children, Healthcare access, Healthcare utilization, Health status, Financial burden
Discipline
Health Economics
Research Areas
Macroeconomics
Publication
American Journal of Health Economics
ISSN
2332-3493
Identifier
10.1086/733364
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press
Citation
MARCUS, Michelle and ZHANG, Xuan.
Expanding public health insurance to parents : Effect on parents' and children’s well-being. (2026). American Journal of Health Economics.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2786
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1086/733364
Comments
PDF provided by faculty