Medicaid use by documented and undocumented farm workers

A Test of the Validity of Imputed Legal Immigration Status

We evaluate the performance of a widely used technique for imputing the legal immigration status of U.S. immigrants in survey data-the logical imputation method. We validate this technique by implementing it in a nationally representative survey of U.S. farmworkers that includes a well-regarded measure of legal status. When using this measure as a benchmark, the imputation algorithm correctly identifies the legal status of 78% of farmworkers. Of all the variables included in the algorithm, we find that Medicaid participation poses the greatest challenge for accuracy. Using the American Community Survey, we show that increased Medicaid enrollments stemming from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014 led to sizable changes in the share of immigrants imputed as legal over time and across space. We explore the implications of these changes for two previous studies and conclude that including Medicaid criteria in the imputation algorithm can significantly impact research findings. We also provide tools to gauge the sensitivity of results.

Changing SNAP-Participation Trends Among Farmworker Households in the U.S., 2003-2012

We investigated Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation among citizen, documented and undocumented immigrant hired crop farmworkers for ten recent years. We analyzed population representative data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey for 2003-2012 (N = 18,243 households). Time-chart, simple mean differences, and logistic regressions described farmworker household participation in SNAP. The 2008 financial crisis almost doubled SNAP-participation by agriculture households (6.5% in 2003-2007 vs. 11.3% in 2008-2012). The increasing SNAP-participation was found for citizen, documented and undocumented immigrant households. We found low participation among documented (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.56-0.8) and undocumented immigrants (OR 0.63, 95% CI 0.54-0.74) compared to citizens. Low odds ratios (OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.55-0.89) were found for Hispanic-citizens as compared with non-Hispanic white-citizens. Our results may help inform the debate surrounding the effects of the financial crisis on SNAP-participation and on differences in participation among citizens, immigrants, Hispanics and non-Hispanics, the latter suggesting ethnic farmworker disparities in SNAP-participation.