Childhood health impacts our lifelong health; children who don’t have access to care have a higher risk of health issues that follow them into adulthood and limit their lifelong potential.

We Know

  • Children who have health insurance have a lower risk of death¹
  • Adults covered by public health insurance programs like Medicaid/CHIP as children are healthier throughout adulthood and have lower rates of disability and death than adults who were covered by these programs for less time or were uninsured as children²‚³
  • Children covered by Medicaid in the 1980s and 90s grew up to pay more taxes by age 28 and collect fewer Earned Income tax Credits than adults of the same generation that were uninsured as children
Footnotes
  1. Woolhandler, S., & Himmelstein, D.U. (2017). The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is lack of insurance deadly? Annals of Internal Medicine, 16796), 424. https://doi.org/10.7326/m17-1403
  2. Goodman-Bacon. (2021). The Long-Run Effects of Childhood Insurance Coverage: Medicaid implementation, adult health, and labor market outcomes. The American Economic Review, 11(8), 25502593. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20171671
  3. Thompson, O. (2017). The Long-term Health Impacts of Medicaid and CHIP. Journal of Health Economics, 51, 26-40. https://pubmed.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/28040620/
  4. Brown, D. W., Kowalski, A. E., & Lurie, I. Z. (2015). Medicaid as an Investment in Children: What is the long-term impact on tax receipts? (No. w20835). National Bureau of Economic Research.