Facts to Consider

ERIU's Facts to Consider are snapshots of data from our very own Fast Facts tables. Facts to Consider provide examples of the information available in Fast Facts from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). ERIU's Fast Facts offer unique "next level" tabulations of characteristics of the uninsured, tabulations of characteristics that vary within groups that are uninsured for different lengths of time, and comparisons of different data sources.

Click a link to view more information and visit the Fast Facts homepage for "next level" looks at characteristics of the uninsured.

• Among workers earning less than $7.00 per hour, 36.2% are uninsured throughout the year, compared with 3.3% of workers earning more than $25 per hour.
  
  
• One quarter of the uninsured are poor, and over half (53.5%) have income below twice the poverty threshold.
  
  
• More than half of all uninsured adults have no more than a high school diploma as their highest level of education, and the share among immigrants is almost three in four.
  
  
• The number of uninsured varies with the time period considered. One survey found the number uninsured at a point in time to be 42 percent more than the number uninsured for an entire year, and 26 percent less than the number ever uninsured during the year.
  
  
• In 2002, half of non-elderly Hispanics were uninsured at some time during the year.
  
  
• Hospital stays are both expensive and uncommon. In 2003, 5.8 percent of the non-elderly were hospitalized, and among the non-elderly uninsured, 5.0 percent were hospitalized.
  
  
• In 2003, half of uninsured adults were ages 19 to 34, according to both all-year and point-in-time measures.
  
  
• Among children who were uninsured at some point during 2003, over half (52.2 percent) were in families with two married adults.
  
  
• In 2003, the uninsured rate was higher for single adults without children than for single adults living with children (22.7 percent vs. 8.6 percent).
  
  
• Among immigrants who were uninsured in 2005, 79.3 percent were non-citizens.
  
  
• In 2005, a higher percentage of uninsured whites (24.0 percent) have incomes above 400 percent of the poverty level than do uninsured blacks (11.2 percent) or Hispanics (19.3 percent).