Uninsured Americans By Family Income

Will Riley — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:58:26 +0000

In the news media, you hear a lot of talk about whether or not the Democrats will be able to carry out health care reform, and whether the Republicans will be able to stop them, but very little coverage describes any specific problem of the U.S. healthcare system in detail. Almost no one talks about how the relationship between socio-economic class and health insurance coverage. So I spent several hours compiling public data from the U.S. Census Bureau into a spreadsheet. In particular, I gathered 2006, 2007, and 2008 data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. From this data, I created the following visualization of how health insurance coverage is directly related to family income:

The Y-axis represents the percentage of people within a family income level that lack insurance. For example, in 2008, 46.30% of Americans with no family income had no health insurance. It looks like the more money you have, the more likely you will be insured, and the less money you have, the less likely you will be insured. So rich men, women, and children are more likely to have health insurance than poor men, women, and children. Is this distribution of health coverage fair? Do poor men, women, or children need or deserve less health care coverage than their richer counterparts?

Will Riley » America

Uninsured Americans By Family Income