Research has shown that parental health shocks and child health status each exert measurable effects on child educational attainment, particularly in low-middle income countries. In 2005, the Vietnamese government enacted a new health insurance policy increasing the proportion of population covered by health insurance from 22% of total population to approximately 43%. Using a quasi-experimental setup and a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, this paper examines the unintended effects of health insurance reforms on children’s educational outcomes. Because households in the state sector were almost unaffected before and after the reform, children in that group served as a natural control group, whereas children growing up in non-state employed households formed a treatment group. Educational outcomes were measured for three levels of general education: primary, secondary and high school. Results showed that the NHI reform improved educational outcomes for children in high school, both in terms of enrollment and school completion likelihood. We found a stronger effect on school enrollment rather than school completion. These findings are the first of their kind using the nationally representative data and would be of value to policy makers in countries that plan to adopt a similar health policy.

研究表明，父母的健康冲击和儿童的健康状况都会对儿童的教育程度产生可衡量的影响，尤其是在中低收入国家。2005 年，越南政府颁布了一项新的医疗保险政策，将医疗保险覆盖的人口比例从总人口的 22% 提高到约 43%。本文使用准实验设置和差异中的差异 (DID) 方法，研究了医疗保险改革对儿童教育成果的意外影响。由于国有部门的家庭在改革前后几乎不受影响，因此该组的儿童作为自然对照组，而在非国有就业家庭中长大的儿童则形成了治疗组。测量了三个层次的普通教育的教育成果：小学、中学和高中。结果表明，NHI 改革改善了高中儿童的教育成果，包括入学率和完成学业的可能性。我们发现对入学率的影响比对完成学业的影响更大。这些发现是同类研究中首次使用具有全国代表性的数据，对计划采用类似卫生政策的国家的政策制定者具有价值。