How Medicaid spending varies across children

In 2023, Medicaid paid around $119.5 billion in medical expenses for the 35.5 million children ages 0 to 18 who were enrolled in the program. That’s an average of $3,366 per child. But that average doesn’t say much about how Medicaid spending is actually distributed across the population of enrolled children.

To gain a clearer picture of how Medicaid spending varies across children, researchers can turn to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which provides detailed, nationally representative data on health care expenditures by payment source. The survey data show that Medicaid spends $300 or less on half of enrollees age 0 to 18.

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Breaking down Medicaid costs per child

Average annual Medicaid expenditure among enrollees ages 0 to 18 in the survey sample

Note: Data cover 2019 to 2023. Of the approximately 15,500 children ages 0 to 18 included in the sample, 53 percent were covered by Medicaid, compared with 47 percent of the total U.S. population of children. Dollar amounts are rounded to nearest hundred.
Source: IPUMS MEPS, University of Minnesota.

MEPS data also capture the number and average dollar amounts associated with different types of medical visits. Not surprisingly, children with higher expenditures experienced more medical events in a year. On average, children in the bottom 50 percent of Medicaid expenditures had 1.5 office-based visits that cost Medicaid $45 each. Children in the top 1 percent had an average of 40.4 visits that cost Medicaid $285 each.

Aidan Bryant and Ella Tracy provided research assistance for this article.

This article is featured in the Fall 2026 issue of For All, the magazine of the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute