A generation after the U.S. expanded safety-net health coverage to pregnant women who would otherwise be uninsured, their grandchildren are still reaping the benefits, a new study suggests.
A new economic paper that examines the long-term benefits of Medicaid coverage for pregnant women suggests that when babies born with coverage grew up and started families of their own, those kids had higher average birth weights. The number of children born with extremely low birth weights, a serious condition, also fell.
Scientists know that conditions during gestation and birth can have long-lasting consequences. Generations born during famines, for example, had poorer health throughout their lives. One study found that children exposed in utero to radiation from nuclear testing in Norway in the 1950s and '60s grew up to have lower IQs, less education and lower earnings. Some effects seemed to be passed on to their children, too.
Recent research suggests that people who have health insurance from infancy experience benefits later in life. "When they grew up, they actually had fewer hospitalizations, were less likely to have diabetes [and] other chronic illnesses," said Sarah Miller, an economist at the University of Michigan who co-authored the recent paper on prenatal Medicaid coverage. The study, released as a working paper, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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