6.4
Additional Discussion of Regression Results
This analysis has additional limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results. It is possible that there are cultural factors within each language group that influence decisions about health care utilization in a systematic way. If this were the case, speakers of a certain language would make health care choices as a result of being a native speaker of that language, and not directly because of speaking the language itself. However, even if these external factors have a significant impact on immigrants’ decisionmaking process, this analysis still confirms the hypothesis that there are significant differences between children in immigrant subgroups, both in terms of parental legal status and language spoken at home. As discussed previously, this analysis also suffers from the limits of binary dependent variables. The models in this analysis have a binary dependent variable that reflects whether the child has utilized a certain measure of health care. As for insurance coverage, a simple answer to a yes-no question cannot indicate whether the coverage is permanent or temporary. Non-citizens, who tend to be poorer than citizens and therefore more sensitive to marginal changes in income, could be insured at one point in time, but uninsured at another.5 Another potential source of bias may involve parental immigration status. Since the non-citizen population includes permanent residents, who are better integrated into the U.S. in general and are less concerned about legal status, the coefficients for non-citizens may be underestimating the effect of barriers that non-permanent residents experience. While the dataset for this analysis places undocumented immigrants, permanent residents, and non-permanent residents such as those with employment visa into the broad category of “non-citizens,� future studies could look at these segments of the immigration population separately. 5 Almost half of non-citizens have incomes less than 100% of federal poverty level, which is an annual income of $23,550 for a family of four.
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