Multigenerational Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net: Early Life Exposure to Medicaid and the Next Generation's Health

A growing number of studies document that health conditions in early life contribute to later life health and economic disparities. Emerging evidence suggests that policy interventions can ameliorate these long-term effects. We extend the existing literature by considering whether the health benefits associated with a large-scale public health intervention persist beyond the treated generation onto the offspring of the treated generation. Specifically, we link variation in mothers' childhood access to Medicaid, resulting from the 1980s Medicaid expansions, to infant health outcomes available in the Vital Statistics Natality files. We find strong evidence that the health benefits associated with early life access to Medicaid extend to later offspring. This has important implications for cost-benefit analyses.

Marianne Page is a professor of economics and deputy director of the Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. Her research includes studies of intergenerational mobility and the impact of social programs on children's outcomes and has been published in nationally recognized journals such as the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Labor Economics and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. She is currently the principle investigator for a large-scale interdisciplinary National Science Foundation Grant "Understanding Children in Economic Distress."