Change in Health Care Use by Agricultural Workers in the United States, 2000 to 2020

• In Event: 40861 - Section on Sociology of Population Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Health and Mortality

Abstract

We employ regression decomposition techniques to estimate the percentage of the total change in health care use from 2000-2002 to 2016-2020 among U.S. agricultural farmworkers that was attributable to nine key attributes: sex, age, education, English proficiency, income, health insurance, access to an automobile, migratory work, and documented status. We then assess whether the relationships between these nine worker-level attributes and the use of health care services have changed over time. We find that about two-thirds of the increase in farmworkers’ use of U.S.-based health care services can be accounted for by shifts in the composition of the farmworker population in terms of the nine key characteristics noted above. We also find that the impact of having health insurance became significantly more positive, and that the negative impact of being undocumented was attenuated in the later period, relative to the earlier period.

Authors

• Jeffrey M Timberlake, University of Cincinnati

• Alexa Friesen-Haarer, University of Cincinnati