Ryan Brown and Andrea Velásquez have been awarded an NIH R03 grant for their project "Long-term Effects of Universal Health Insurance in Developing Countries: Evidence from Mexico."
Public health insurance programs are increasingly being implemented worldwide, placing significant demands on public finances. However, there is limited evidence on their long-term effects. This project aims to fill this gap by studying Mexico’s Seguro Popular, a program that provided public health insurance to nearly half of the country’s population. By exploiting the panel nature of the Mexican Family Life Survey, the first large-scale, nationally representative survey that has successfully followed respondents across international borders, this project will merge detailed migration histories, rich individual and household health and economic survey questions, and program rollout information to identify and document the extent to which providing universal health insurance in a developing country can improve fetal development, support child health, promote wellness over the life course, and ultimately, reduce existing economic disparities through improved household finances, nutrition, and provision of public health resources.