Poster #19 - Credit Score Implications of Pregnancy and Childbirth Among Louisiana Medicaid Beneficiaries

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

After the birth of a child, many households face a heightened risk of economic insecurity. Despite these pressures, the impact of childbirth on the economic stability of financially vulnerable families is not well understood. Using Louisiana Medicaid claims linked to anonymized credit report data from one of the national consumer credit reporting bureaus, we compared credit scores and the probability of having poor credit for women who gave birth between July 2018 and December 2019 to a matched sample of women who did not, stratified by race and ethnicity. We found no statistically significant impacts of childbirth on credit scores or the probability of having poor credit for non-Hispanic White or Hispanic women. In contrast, non-Hispanic Black women experienced statistically significant reductions in credit scores-ranging from 1 to 4 points-immediately after pregnancy and persisting for up to one year after childbirth. While modest in magnitude, these changes translated into increases of up to 5 percentage points in the likelihood of having poor credit. Our findings indicate that Medicaid’s financial protections may not extend evenly across populations.

Authors

• Brigham Cody Walker, Tulane University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Wei-Cheng Tsai, Tulane University
  Presenting Author