Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Publication Title
Southern Economic Journal
Abstract
Although people who go through the prison and jail system in the United States have significant health care needs, many leave it with no health insurance and, as a result, they experience gaps in access to care. Exploiting variation in Medicaid eligibility policies for incarcerated individuals across states and using administrative prison release data, we find that suspending rather than terminating Medicaid upon incarceration decreases the probability of returning to prison within 1 and 3 years of release by 2.91 and 4.58 percentage points, respectively. These effects are observed among different types of prisoners, but are greater for Black and repeat offenders. Our results suggest that faster and easier reinstatement of Medicaid benefits upon prison release decreases recidivism rate and are directly relevant to ongoing policy debates on the health care coverage of vulnerable populations.
Volume
28
Issue
2
DOI
10.1002/soej.12600
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Gollu, Gultekin and Zapryanova, Mariyana, "The Effect of Medicaid on Recidivism: Evidence From Medicaid Suspension and Termination Policies" (2022). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/110
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.