How does legal status matter for oral health care among Mexican-origin children in California?

•Speculation exists on the importance of documentation status for dental care.•Parental documentation has not been uniquely important for dental care.•Parental citizenship predicted differences in child dental care in the early 2000s.•These differences subsequently decreased by 2014 when dental care rose for all children.•Increases were especially prominent among categories of non-citizens.•Declines in immigration imply that increasing attention to the native born is needed.

This research examines the relationship between legal status and oral health care among Mexican-origin children. Using the 2001-2014 California Health Interview Surveys, the objectives are: (1) to demonstrate population-level changes in the legal statuses of parents, the legal statuses of children, and the likelihood of receiving dental care; (2) to reveal how the roles of legal status boundaries in dental care are changing; and (3) to determine whether the salience of these boundaries is attributable to legal status per se. The results reveal increases in the native-born share and dental care utilization for the total Mexican-origin population. Although dental care was primarily linked to parental citizenship early in this period, parental legal statuses are no longer a unique source of variation in utilization (despite the greater likelihood of insurance among citizens). These results imply that future gains in utilization among Mexican-origin children will mainly come from overcoming barriers to care among the native born.