Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine Its Positive Impact On Health For Recipients And Their Children.

Caitlin Patler,Erin Hamilton,Robin Savinar,Kelsey Meagher

doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05495

Caitlin Patler, Erin Hamilton + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05495

Copy DOI

Abstract

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse self-reported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Evidence suggests that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama and which granted some rights to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, improved the well-being of recipients and their children in the first three years after the program's introduction. However, DACA is subject to executive discretion, and the US presidential campaign that began in 2015 introduced substantial uncertainty regarding the program's future. We examined whether DACA's health benefits persisted beyond 2015 using the 2007-17 waves of the California Health Interview Survey and dynamic treatment effects models. Our results show that self-reported health improved for Latina/o DACA-eligible immigrants and their children from 2012 to 2015 but worsened after 2015. Our results suggest that the political climate of the 2016 presidential election may have underscored the politically contingent nature of the DACA program and eroded the program's health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children.

Highlights

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse selfreported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do
We considered the impacts of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on children of DACA-eligible mothers, whom we compared to children whose mothers are undocumented ineligible
For children of DACAeligible mothers, 79 percent were reported to have good health during the pre-DACA period, which rose to 99 percent in the first post period, and dropped to 75 percent in the second post period

Summary

Introduction

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse selfreported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Our results suggest that the political climate of the 2016 presidential election may have underscored the politically contingent nature of the DACA program and eroded the program’s health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children. A number of studies have examined DACA’s short-term impacts and found overwhelmingly positive effects in the two to three years following its announcement These studies have linked DACA to improved high school graduation rates and employment outcomes,[14,15,16] decreased rates of poverty,[17] lower teen birth rates,[14] improvements to mental health,[18,19,20] and stronger feelings of inclusion and belonging.[21] One study found that DACA’s effects may be intergenerational—that diagnoses of adjustment and anxiety disorders declined among children of DACA-eligible immigrants in Oregon in the three years following the program’s creation.[18] it is unclear whether DACA’s short-term impacts on health will hold over the longer term. Our results suggest that DACA’s limited and politically contingent nature eroded the program’s perceived health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children

Results

Discussion

Conclusion