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Title: Explaining Children's Heath Problems: The Effects of Poverty and Access to Health Insurance
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Kowaleski-Jones, Lori
Explaining Children's Heath Problems: The Effects of Poverty and Access to Health Insurance
Presented: San Francisco, CA, Population Association of America, April 1995
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Benefits, Insurance; Child Health; Family Income; Family Size; Health Care; Income Level; Morbidity; Poverty; Rural/Urban Differences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This research uses a sample of exactly 1144 children between the ages of 8 and 11 in 1990 to: 1) explore the effects of deficient family income and health care insurance on children's health service utilization and morbidity; and 2) to assess the methodological concern of whether it is better to measure children's health problems as one multi-dimensional construct or as several uni-dimensional constructs. The data are drawn from the 1979 through 1990 rounds of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Merged Mother-Child file. It is clear from these analyses that Medicaid health insurance conferred substantial benefits to children. The effects of private insurance coverage were not as straightforward. Rather than having strong additive effects on children's health services utilization, the effects of income adequacy are contingent on the levels of family and community stressors present in the child's life. For example, adequate income adequacy diminishes the p otential ben efits of kin support within the home, and intensifies the negative effects of both large family sizes and central city residence. These findings that income effects are contingent on levels of family and community characteristics represent a contribution to the literature because they further specify the relationship between childhood poverty and health. Finally, with the data available in this dataset, it seems clear that several uni-dimensional constructs tapping different aspects of child health represent the optimal methodological strategy.
Bibliography Citation
Kowaleski-Jones, Lori. "Explaining Children's Heath Problems: The Effects of Poverty and Access to Health Insurance." Presented: San Francisco, CA, Population Association of America, April 1995.