CHAMP trainee and PhD candidate Stacy Chen, in collaboration with CHAMP faculty Rebecca Staiger, explored how Medicaid expansion increased income of newly eligible adults in the 5 years following expansion. To do this, they used a differences and differences method to compare changes in income among low-income adults living in expansion states, before and after expansion, with changes in income in low-income adults living in non-expansion states. They found that low-income adults living in Medicaid-expansion states experienced an average 9.5% relative increase in income in the 5 years after expansion but that this increase was only populations that newly became eligible for Medicaid after expansion. With so much political uncertainty around Medicaid funding, this work is vital to understanding that welfare gains from Medicaid reach far beyond merely health improvements.
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