centage point increase in Medicaid eligibility between 1984 and 1992 decreased child mortality by 5.1 percent. Another study found that these Medicaid expansions reduced the internal mortality rate—which accounts for deaths from diseases rather than from accidents or crime—for covered African American children by 13 percent to 20 percent. With regard to education, one group of researchers found that a 10 percentage point increase in average Medicaid eligibility for children reduces their high school dropout rate by 4 percent to 6 percent and raises their bachelor’s degree attainment by 4 percent to 6 percent. Another study found that each additional year of Medicaid eligibility increases the likelihood of college attendance by 0.4 percentage points.
One should expect that making children healthier and more educated—as these studies show that Medicaid has—will boost the future earnings of these children. Using tax data, a group of researchers found that an additional 10 years of childhood Medicaid eligibility raises a 28-year-old woman’s cumulative earnings by 5 percent. Similarly, another study showed that a 10 percentage point increase in Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women increased average future incomes for their children by 1.3 percent to 1.5 percent.
Access to Medicaid also makes children less reliant on safety net programs when they become adults, which offsets much of the government’s initial Medicaid costs. One study finds that the government receives 56 cents back from every dollar of childhood Medicaid spending, because the subsequent increase in earnings lead to more tax revenue and less safety net spending.
The House budget singles out the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—formerly known as food stamps—for particularly severe cuts by converting the program to a smaller block grant. The vague cuts called for in the resolution would also be likely to reduce support for other nutrition programs—such as the School Breakfast Program, or SBP, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. Numerous studies have found that each of these food assistance programs makes children healthier, which means that cutting these programs will make the future workforce less healthy and productive.
For example, a recent study showed that WIC—a program targeted at pregnant women and children younger than age five—increases birth weights and directly affects other positive health outcomes. This supports the findings of another study showing that access to WIC reduces the probability that a child has a low birth weight. A study on the SBP found that the program allows children to eat healthier foods, which lowers their share of calories from fat while raising their fiber intake. At the same time, access to SBP results in children who are less likely to suffer from deficiencies in vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate and are more likely to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendations for potassium and iron intake.
Research on SNAP by Hilary W. Hoynes, Douglas Almond, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach has documented several positive health and economic outcomes of the program. The three researchers analyzed differences at the county level that are linked to the establishment of the Food Stamp Program, which created a natural experiment when it began operating in various counties between 1961 and 1975. A 2011 paper by these aforementioned researchers concluded that access to food stamps reduced the incidence of low birth weights, especially for African Americans. Another paper published by these researchers in 2015 found that a child’s access to food stamps while in utero and during early childhood was associated with positive health effects that lasted for decades. Specifically, food stamps reduced the future incidence of metabolic syndrome—a collection of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart attacks.
Hoynes, Almond, and Schanzenbach also linked food stamp access during childhood to higher economic self-sufficiency for women in adulthood,