Abstract
Estimating rates of public benefit use for lawful permanent residents (LPRs) is difficult given the limited availability of nationally representative data that disaggregate the foreign-born population by legal status. Using the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation—the only national survey that distinguishes LPRs from other non-citizens—we employ logistic regression to compare estimates of health insurance coverage for legal immigrants using two methods to infer legal status: (1) a logical approach and (2) a survey-based approach. The logical approach, relative to the survey approach, yields a higher predicted probability of having any insurance for LPRs (adjPP = 0.70) compared to the survey approach (adjPP = 0.57) and a higher likelihood of having public health insurance (adjPP = 0.26 compared to adjPP = 0.09, respectively). These findings suggest that the logical approach may overestimate lawful immigrants’ reliance on public benefits, which has implications for conclusions about recent changes to the public charge rule.
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Notes
This is a limitation of the study that is partially addressed using other migration status assignment methods (i.e., the cross-sample multiple imputation, CSMI) that often rely on multiple data sources or administrative data. For an example of CSMI, see Capps et al. 2013. However, these authors also note their inability to fully distinguish among non-citizen nonimmigrant groups.
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Altman, C.E., Spence, C., Hamilton, C. et al. Health Insurance Coverage: Logical Versus Survey Identification of the Foreign-Born. J Immigrant Minority Health 23, 606–614 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-020-01045-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-020-01045-y