We examine differences in the prescribing of psychiatric medications to low-income and higher-income children in the Canadian province of Ontario using rich administrative data that includes diagnosis codes and physician identifiers. Our most striking finding is that conditional on diagnosis and...

In western countries, accidents are the leading cause of death and injury among children, far surpassing diseases as a health threat. We examine the effect of maternal employment and child care policy on rates of accidental injury using both micro data from the National Longitudinal Survey of...

Evaluations of changes to the Medicaid program have focused on increases in the generosity of income cutoffs for Medicaid eligibility. Previous research shows that despite dramatic increases in the number of births paid for by the Medicaid program, women often enroll in Medicaid at the point of...

Distance to hospital may affect the utilization of primary preventative care if children rely on hospitals for such routine care. We explore this question using matched data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Child-Mother file and the American Hospital Association's 1990 Hospital...

One of the goals of federal housing policy is to improve the prospects of children in poor families. But little research has been conducted into the effects of participation in housing programs on children, perhaps because it is difficult to find data sets with information about both...

Two key issues for public insurance policy are the effect of insurance status on medical treatment, and the implications of insurance-induced treat- ment differentials for health outcomes. We address these issues in the context of the treatment of childbirth, using Vital Statistics data on every...

Medicaid is one of the most costly welfare programs available to immigrants. This paper uses data from the 1989 to 1992 National Health Interview Survey to compare the effects of Medicaid eligibility on public and private health insurance coverage and on the utilization of medical services among...