DACA Recipients and Their Health Insurance Dream: Employment, Schooling, and Health Coverage

In the midst of an uncertain future, DACA recipients face current difficulties in accessing health care coverage limiting their decisions on employment and schooling. Using the 1% American Community Survey from 2009 to 2016 and a triple-difference approach, this paper evaluates the impact DACA and access to public coverage has on recipients’ health insurance coverage, employment, and schooling. Because there are differences across states with regard to public coverage policies uniquely accommodating DACA recipients, this paper exploits these differences in order to evaluate whether access to public resources affects recipients’ decisions on employment and schooling, and to test whether the access to these resources creates a crowd out effect between public and private coverage among recipients. We find that DACA eligibles are more likely to work in areas offering public resources (called accommodating areas) and to take on Medicaid coverage after DACA. Medicaid-eligible DACA recipients are the group with the highest response rates on employment and public coverage. College attendance increases for young adults, low-income Hispanics, and high-income women in accommodating areas. In non-accommodating areas, the impact of DACA on schooling is either negative or not significant. The results are robust to several different specifications. The findings offer explanations on the mixed results on schooling in previous literature. Our research suggests that having access to further resources, such as health coverage, encourages people to pursue education as well as work.