A new paper by Sarah Miller and colleagues examines the long-term benefits of the 1980s Medicaid expansion targeting low-income pregnant women. They find evidence that the babies born to the offspring of women with that Medicaid coverage – their grandchildren – had higher average birth weights and a lower incidence of extremely low birth weights. This indicates, the researchers say, that “the return on investment is substantially larger than suggested by evaluations of the program that focus only on treated cohorts.”

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