Siblings Divided: Children’s Immigration Status, Access to Healthcare, and Health Status

Julia Gelatt, Princeton University

This paper looks at the relationship between children’s immigration status, access to healthcare, and health status. I use multiple years of the National Health Interview Survey and Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to examine how the health status of likely-undocumented immigrant children compares to that of their US-born, citizen siblings. By comparing citizen and noncitizen siblings in the same family, I am able to isolate the impact of immigration status from the effects of socioeconomic status and family characteristics, improving upon past efforts to link children’s immigration status to health access and outcomes. I examine several measures of children's access to healthcare, physical health, and behavioral problems.