Abstract
This policy brief examines health insurance coverage of Hispanic children and its relationship to their citizenship status, their parents’ citizenship status, parents’ insurance coverage, language spoken at home, and their state’s Medicaid expansion policies. Using the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey collected in 2014, authors Michael Staley and Jessica Carson report that Hispanic children are less likely to have health insurance than black or white children, a gap that is explained by differences in citizenship status between Hispanic and non-Hispanic children. Noncitizen Hispanic children are nearly three times more likely to be uninsured than Hispanic citizen children living with citizen parents and more than three times more likely to be uninsured than citizen children living with noncitizen parents. Hispanic children who do not have an insured parent are seven times more likely to be uninsured than Hispanic children with at least one insured parent. In conclusion, they suggest policy considerations that might incrementally reduce the number of uninsured children.
Publication Date
Summer 6-15-2016
Series
National Issue Brief No. 101
Publisher
Durham, N.H. : Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Carson, Jessica A. and Staley, Michael J., "Hispanic Children Least Likely to Have Health Insurance: Citizenship, Ethnicity, and Language Barriers to Coverage" (2016). Carsey School of Public Policy. 277.
https://scholars.unh.edu/carsey/277
Rights
Copyright 2016. Carsey School of Public Policy. These materials may be used for the purposes of research, teaching, and private study. For all other uses, contact the copyright holder.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.34051/p/2020.266