State Child Health Insurance Program Policies & Immigrant-Native Disparities in Children’s Health Care Erin Hamilton (Affiliate in Sociology) with graduate researcher Ethan Evans (Sociology)
This project, funded through the Center for Poverty Research
Graduate Student Fellowship Program, examines whether differences
in state implementation of the Children’s Health Insurance
Program (CHIP) affects disparities in health care between
children of immigrants and children of natives.
One in five children in the United States is the child of
immigrants, and children of immigrants are twice as likely as
children of natives to be uninsured. As the health of the United
States depends on the country’s ability to integrate residents of
diverse backgrounds into systems of care, uncovering lessons from
years of experience with CHIP will be useful as we prepare for
full implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014.
Erin Hamilton received her degree in Sociology from the
University of Texas, Austin in 2009. Her current research
investigates the social and demographic sources of international
migration from Mexico to the United States.
2244 Social Sciences and Humanities Building
Davis, CA
One in five children in the United States is the child of
immigrants. These new Americans, most of whom are U.S. citizens,
are more than twice as likely as children of natives to have no
health insurance. Prior research has shown that differences in
income or employment between native and immigrant parents do not
account for the disparity in coverage.
Ethan Evans’ interests include Medical Sociology, Organizations,
Urban Affairs and Social Welfare. His dissertation project
focuses on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, asking: “In
what ways do pre-ACA county indigent care programs impact
implementation of the Act in California?” The project seeks to
understand the influence of institutions at a time when
governance roles and social welfare provision are changing.
