Abstract
Among immigrant children whose parents have historically had lower education, the study explored which immigrant children were most likely to have coverage based on maternal region of origin. The direct and indirect relationship of acculturation on immigrant children’s coverage was also assessed. A subsample of US-born children with foreign-born mothers from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten Cohort was analyzed using multinomial logistic regressions (n = 1,686). Children whose mothers emigrated from the Caribbean or Indochina had greater odds of being insured compared to children whose mothers emigrated from Mexico. Moreover, Latin American children did not statistically differ from Mexican children in being uninsured. Maternal citizenship was positively associated with children’s coverage; while living in a household with a mother who migrated as a child was negatively associated with private insurance. To increase immigrant children’s coverage, Latin American and Mexican families may benefit from additional financial assistance, rather than cultural assistance.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this project was support by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections program and a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K12 HD055882) to the first author. In addition, funding for this project was support by a Young Scholar award from the Foundation for Child Development to the second author.
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Hernandez, D.C., Kimbro, R.T. The Association Between Acculturation and Health Insurance Coverage for Immigrant Children from Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Regions of Origin. J Immigrant Minority Health 15, 453–461 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-012-9643-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-012-9643-1