TY  - JOUR
AU  - Buchmueller,Thomas
AU  - Sasso,Anthony Lo
AU  - Wong,Kathleen
TI  - How Did SCHIP Affect the Insurance Coverage of Immigrant Children?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13261
PY  - 2007
Y2  - July 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13261
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13261.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas C. Buchmueller
Stephen M. Ross School of Business
University of Michigan
701 Tappan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734/764-5933
E-Mail: tbuch@bus.umich.edu

Anthony T. Lo Sasso
Health Policy and Administration Division
School of Public Health
University of Illinois at Chicago
1603 W. Taylor
Chicago, IL 60612
E-Mail: losasso@uic.edu

Kathleen Wong
Department of Economics
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
E-Mail: knwong@uci.edu
AB  - The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) significantly expanded public insurance eligibility and coverage for children in "working poor" families.  Despite this success, it is estimated that over 6 million children who are eligible for public insurance remain uninsured.  An important first step for designing strategies to increase enrollment of eligible but uninsured children is to determine how the take-up of public coverage varies within the population.  Because of their low rates of insurance coverage and unique enrollment barriers, children of immigrants are an especially important group to consider.  We compare the effect of SCHIP eligibility on the insurance coverage of children of foreign-born and native-born parents.  In contrast to research on the earlier Medicaid expansions, we find similar take-up rates for the two groups.  This suggests that state outreach strategies were not only effective at increasing take-up overall, but were successful in reducing disparities in access to coverage.
ER  -