Medical Tourism: Babies Across the Border

Abstract

In this article, I address the question of who crosses the border into the United States for the purpose of giving birth, and how these patterns may have changed over time. This work is the first timely, quantitative analysis of its kind for the United States. Decreased medical tourism for the purpose of giving birth during the Trump era has implications on other secondary medical effects of that administration, as well as for how the makeup of the United States population is likely to change. In terms of methodology, I employ data from the 2014–2020 United States Neo-Natality Survey to examine all births in the United States during that time. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and, alternatively, a Probit regression analysis, are employed. I find that putative birth medical tourism decreased dramatically during the Trump administration. Additionally, individuals who come for the purpose of giving birth were generally healthier, higher SES, and more likely to be Hispanic. The findings presented here may be important for informing current and future immigration and medical tourism policies.