Poor educational attainment relative to non-Latinos is a persistent problem for Latino children. This paper examines the capacity of the Head Start program to affect test scores and schooling achievement among these children. Large positive effects are found on all the measures we examine. On...

The poor health status of children in the U.S. relative to other industrialized nations has motivated recent efforts to extend insurance coverage to underprivileged children. There is little past evidence that extending eligibility for public insurance to previously ineligible groups will...

We use data from the National Health Interview Surveys to measure the effects of the growth of Medicaid managed care on children. We examine both the probability that individual children were Medicaid-covered and their utilization of care. We find that managed care penetration has significant...

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on child health in developed countries. I first lay out a simple economic model of the demand for child health inputs, and discuss whether the evidence is consistent with that model. Next, two main causes of market failure in the market for...

This chapter provides an overview of the literature linking health, health insurance and labor market outcomes such as wages, earnings, employment, hours, occupational choice, job turnover, retirement, and the structure of employment. The first part of the paper focuses on the relationship...

This paper investigates the effects of expanding public health insurance eligibility for older children. Using data from the National Health Interview Surveys from 1986 to 2005, we first show that although income continues to be an important predictor of children's health status, the importance...

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...

The majority of children in the US and many other high-income nations are now cared for many hours per week by people who are neither their parents nor their school teachers. The role of such pre-school and out-of-school care is potentially two-fold: First, child care makes it feasible for both...

We begin this research with the belief that low and declining levels of private-employer sponsored health insurance were a continuing problem, especially among less skilled workers. Our analysis, however, paints a more complex picture. Using data from the March CPS, the SIP, and CPS benefits...

We use data from the National Health Interview Surveys to measure the effects of the growth of Medicaid managed care on children. We examine both the probability that individual children were Medicaid-covered and their utilization of care. We find that managed care penetration has significant...