Spillover Effects of Children’s Public Health Insurance on Family Members’ Health-Seeking Behavior

Phatta Kirdruang, University of Minnesota
Pinar Karaca-Mandic, University of Minnesota

This paper focuses on the indirect impacts of children's public health insurance on the parents’ health seeking behavior. More specifically, it seeks to determine the spillover effects of children’s public health insurance program on health care consumption of the parents, given that the demographics, health status, and health insurance of the adults are controlled for. In the first stage, the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) data from the years 1997-2006 will be used in the analysis. In the later stage, the state-identifier variable from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) will be linked to the IHIS data, and state's eligibility rules for Medicaid and SCHIP will be used to instrument for public health insurance in finding the spillover effects on the parents' health care use. Preliminary results based on IHIS data suggest that there is a positive association between children's public health insurance and the parents' visits to doctor office.