Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Americans are deeply concerned about the social costs of the new immigration. Health coverage is one of the social benefits which is problematic for both the native-born and immigrants as the social welfare state contracts and the number of jobs with health benefits shrinks. Among the issues of concern about new immigrants is whether there is a skill mismatch based on educational attainment between immigrants from particular regions and sending countries and the types of jobs providing sufficient wages and health insurance, forcing use of federal or state aid. Prior research indicates an epidemiological paradox because new immigrants may be selected for better health and, at least initially, less in need of non-standard health care. In addition, there are many reasons, including concern about disqualification for permanent residency, which cause immigrants to avoid seeking public health care. This research uses the 2005 and 2006 Current Population Survey to chart the relation between sending region and country, educational attainment and access to health insurance or use of Medicaid through use of percentage data, correlation coefficients and regression analysis. We conclude that educational attainment distributions from particular world sending regions are a major predictor of income and being uninsured as well as not using Medicaid. We would like to expand this analysis to examine household composition and the impact of variations in non-citizen status. We conclude that the native-born are the vast percentage of the uninsured and likely to present the highest cost of insurance because immigrants are selected for health and less likely to seek treatment for various reasons. Immigrants will not necessarily massively increase health costs.