Preschool as a Gateway to Health Care Services for Low-Income Children

We thank Victoria Cholette, Janet Currie, Michael Darden, Bill Evans, David Figlio, Sherry Glied, Chris Karbownik, Ari Ne’eman, Maria Polyakova, Lee Sanders, Joshua Salomon, and participants at the Annual Health Economics Conference, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Workshop, and NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments. We also thank Isabella Chu, Sun Young Jeon and David Rehkopf from the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences (PHS) and Jens Hainmueller and the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab for assistance with accessing and using the Medicaid data at PHS. This study has been approved by Stanford’s Institutional Review Board (Protocol 68281). Sabety gratefully acknowledges grant support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K01HD113828. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• January 7, 2026
• March 27, 2026