p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; line-height: 120%; text-align: left; }a:link { color: rgb(5, 99, 193); }
Francisca García-Cobián Richter presents - " A Panel Study of Medicaid Insured Mothers and Infant Health Outcomes "
Infant mortality (IM), or the rate at which infants die within their first year of life, has improved in the last decade nationwide. Yet, by 2016, Ohio ranked 8th in the nation, with the rate for black children close to double the rate for white children.
This study explores the effect that WIC and counseling services covered under Medicaid have on birth outcomes for children born in Ohio from 2008 through 2015. We construct a panel of women who gave birth at least twice during that period, which allows us to control for mother time-invariant unobserved factors that may influence selection into these services.
Both, for infant mortality and very low birth weight outcomes, we find a positive effect of services classified as prenatal nutrition and breastfeeding counseling, even after controlling for WIC receipt, order of pregnancy, and changes in health risk factors for mothers. Furthermore, the effects tend to be larger for Black mothers. Since billed counseling services are not reflective of any one single intervention, it is possible that our estimates capture the effects of more interactions between low-income, minority moms and the healthcare system, which has shown to improve trust in the system. Unfortunately, to date, these services reach a very small share of Medicaid mothers in Ohio.
The views stated in the report are those of the researchers only and are not to be attributed to the study sponsors, the Ohio Department of Medicaid or to the Federal Medicaid Program.
Francisca García-Cobián Richter is a Research Assistant Professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.
She earned an undergraduate degree in statistics from the Universidad Católica del Perú (1994). Her M.S. in statistics (1997) and Ph.D. in agricultural economics (2000) are both from Oklahoma State University. Prior to coming to CWRU, she was a Research Economist in Community Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Dr. Richter’s research focuses on the analysis of social interventions and the environments in which they operate. Her recent work includes evaluating the effects of housing and neighborhood quality on children’s academic outcomes and evaluating a pay-for-success intervention targeted to families in the child welfare system facing housing instability.
Dr. Richter is also associate director of the Math Corps Cleveland, a community-oriented academic enrichment and mentoring program for area middle and high-school students.
