The Impact of Access to Prenatal Care on the Benefits of Next Generation: Using the CHIP Unborn Child Option

This paper studies the effect of access to prenatal care on children's health, exploiting the public health policy, so-called the CHIP unborn child option, that enables pregnant noncitizens to get prenatal care regardless of legal immigration status. Using state-level variation in whether to opt in and the timing of policy adoption, I find that eligible female noncitizens increase public health insurance coverage rate and subsequently increase the number of a doctor's office visits in 12 months previous to the survey. For children's outcome, the key result is a decline in the presence of chronic health conditions at ages four to six, which may result in long-lasting health problems during their entire life. Also, the school attendance rate increases among children who were eligible in utero, implying that CHIP unborn child option enhance children's health and increase their pre-school or kindergarten attendance rate. This paper finds that the guaranteed availability of prenatal care can induce substantial benefits in children's health.