The 1996 welfare reform legislation contained a number of provisions that greatly limited
the eligibility of many immigrants (particularly non-citizens and non-refugees) to receive
many types of public assistance. In response to the federal legislation, many states chose
to protect their immigrant populations from the presumed adverse impact of PRWORA by
offering state-funded assistance to these groups.
I use data drawn from 1995 to 2001 Annual Demographic Supplements of the Current
Population Surveys to examine the relation between the immigrant-related provisions in
PRWORA—as modified by the subsequent state responses—and health insurance coverage
in the immigrant population. In the absence of any behavioral response, one would have
expected that health insurance coverage rates would have been sharply curtailed in the
population most adversely affected by the restrictions, the non-citizens living in states that
did not offer state-funded assistance to their immigrant populations. In other words, as the
Medicaid cutbacks took effect, the proportion of those immigrants covered by some type
of health insurance should have declined