Public Health Insurance of Children and Maternal Labor Market Outcomes

This paper exploits variation resulting from a series of federal and state Medicaid expansions between 1977 and 2017 to estimate the effects of children’s increased access to public health insurance on the labor market outcomes of their mothers. The results imply that the extended Medicaid eligibility of children leads to positive labor supply responses of single mothers and to negative labor supply responses of married mothers. The analysis of mechanisms suggests that extended children’s Medicaid eligibility positively affects take-up of Medicaid and health of children.