Parental Documentation Status and Coverage Disparities among the Children of Latino Immigrants

Objective: To measure the effect of parental documentation status and children’s own status on health insurance among the 10 million children of Latino immigrants. These children experience the highest uninsurance rate among their peers, and 60% belong to mixed-status families where parents and children have different documentation statuses. Immigrant adults face significant barriers related to documentation status, and policies that restrict access for immigrant adults may ultimately exclude their children, most of whom are U.S.-born citizens.

Methods: I examine measures of documentation status, insurance, and child-/family-level controls among a nationally-representative cross-section of 4244 children with Latino immigrant parents in the Survey of Income & Program Participation. My pooled sample includes data collected in September 2007 (1263 children) and December 2008 (2981 children). I estimate uninsurance by parental status (naturalized citizen, permanent resident, or undocumented) and children’s status (citizen vs. non-citizen). I then estimate the marginal effect of children’s documentation status, and compare this over categories of parental documentation status to examine how parental status alters the effect of children’s status. 

Findings: Among children of Latino immigrants, non-citizen children have nearly twice the uninsurance rate of citizen children (53.0% vs. 27.2%). Yet, adjusted models reveal that even though citizen children overall have better insurance rates than non-citizen children, having at least one undocumented parent significantly diminishes these advantages.

Conclusions: In developing and evaluating healthcare (e.g., the ACA) and immigration policies, policymakers must consider both the impact of restrictive policies for immigrant adults themselves, and the indirect, detrimental effects on their children.