Effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Youth Mental Health: Findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 2009-2019
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- I investigate the effects of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid Expansion on the mental health of high school students using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System from 2009 to 2019. I find that Medicaid Expansion was associated with decreases in rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Following Medicaid Expansion, youth residing in Expansion states experienced a 0.73 percentage point decline in suicidal ideation and a 0.68 percentage point decline in suicide attempts, a 4.88% and 4.80% reduction over the pre-treatment mean in Expansion states, respectively; these effects are marginally significant at the 10% level. The effects of Medicaid Expansion against suicidality appear five years post-policy implementation for both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, which is 2019 for most of the Expansion states. Analyzing the effects of Medicaid Expansion by demographic subgroups suggest that the policy may have particularly benefited Black and queer youth who experienced increases in the prevalence of self-reported major depressive episodes but decreases in suicidal behavior.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2023 |
| Publication date | November 30, 2023; June 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kim, Rachel |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Rossin-Slater, Maya |
Subjects
| Subject | Medicaid Expansion |
|---|---|
| Subject | Affordable Care Act |
| Subject | youth mental health |
| Subject | suicidality |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Kim, R. (2023). Effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on Youth Mental Health: Findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 2009-2019. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/ym824dv9278. https://doi.org/10.25740/ym824dv9278.
Collection
Stanford University, Public Policy Program, Undergraduate Honors Theses and Practicum Projects
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- Contact
- rachelsy@alumni.stanford.edu
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