IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/coecpo/v44y2026i2p234-252.html

Parents' legal status and children's health insurance: Evidence from DACA

Author

Listed:
  • Nhan Tran

Abstract

Fear of immigration enforcement may deter undocumented parents from enrolling their US‐born children in public health insurance. This paper examines the effect of providing legal status to parents through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on health insurance among US‐born children. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find DACA eligibility among likely undocumented mothers increases Medicaid enrollment for US‐born children by five percentage points. I find no similar evidence among those with likely undocumented fathers. The estimates are local to individuals near the age threshold. There is suggestive evidence of heterogeneity in effects across groups of DACA‐eligible mothers.

Suggested Citation

  • Nhan Tran, 2026. "Parents' legal status and children's health insurance: Evidence from DACA," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(2), pages 234-252, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:44:y:2026:i:2:p:234-252
    DOI: 10.1111/coep.70009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.70009
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/coep.70009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:44:y:2026:i:2:p:234-252. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.