Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Economic Consequences of Health Shocks: Evidence from Medicaid

The Tulane and Yale teams will conduct a series of studies that examine the economic consequences of health shocks for Louisiana Medicaid beneficiaries and the extent to which these consequences vary by race, ethnicity, and sex. The project will link administrative Louisiana Medicaid claims and enrollment data with credit report data (including medical and nonmedical indicators of financial strain) provided by Equifax. For their analysis, the team will compare beneficiaries with a health shock against those without a health shock using a difference-in-difference (DiD) regression model that controls for age, education, and individual fixed-effects. They will employ an event study variation to understand the onset and timing of financial effects following a health shock.