Poverty Rose, Median Income Declined, and Job-Based Health Insurance Continued to Weaken in 2008

This Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report analyzed 2008 Census data and identified trends in increased poverty, reduced health insurance coverage, and other continuing effects of the recession.

Some 46.3 million U.S. residents lacked health insurance in 2008, an increase of 682,000 over the previous year and 6.6 million more than in 2001. The proportion of the population without health insurance stood at 15.4 percent in 2008, not significantly different than the 15.3 percent rate in 2007 but considerably above the 14.1 percent figure in 2001.

The percentage of people with employer-provided health insurance, the principal source of coverage for the non-elderly, has been trending downward since 2001 and is the leading contributor to the increase over time in the number of uninsured. In 2008, some 61.9 percent of people below age 65 had health coverage through their employer, down from 62.9 percent in 2007 and 67.0 percent in 2001.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2009). Poverty Rose, Median Income Declined, and Job-Based Health Insurance Continued to Weaken in 2008: Recession Likely to Expand Ranks of Poor and Uninsured in 2009 and 2010. Arloc Sherman, Robert Greenstein, Danilo Trisi and Paul N. Van de Water

Full report: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2914