The effect of Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions on foster care admissions

Recent papers have documented positive externalities of Medicaid expansions on several non‐health related variables, such as crime, financial stress, child support, and child abuse. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between access to public health insurance and foster care admissions following state decisions to expand Medicaid coverage after the Affordable Care Act. Over 70% of all foster care admissions are related to child abuse incidents, which have been found to decrease following the Medicaid expansions. Our results suggest that the Medicaid expansions are associated with a large decrease in foster care admissions, driven by neglect incidents.