The relationship between income and health insurance coverage is strong. In general, an individual's likelihood of having health insurance coverage increases with income. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates of the March 1999 Current Population Survey (CPS), 25.2 percent of individuals in households with income of less than $25,000 were uninsured in 1998, compared with 8.3 percent of individuals in households with income of $75,000 or more. Unfortunately, this finding masks two important facts relating to the definition of "household composition" and "household income." First, in the CPS, a household may be comprised of unrelated individuals, such as college roommates, and each household may contain one or more families, including people who are unlikely to be covered by one another for health insurance. Using their total income, then, would inflate the amount of money available for each person to purchase health insurance. In light of this, family income would give a more precise estimate of income that a person has available for this purchase. Second, examination of household or family income ignores the fact that many families include more than one worker. Persons in a family with two workers each earning $38,000 may be less likely to be insured than a single person earning $75,000. This paper examines uninsured adults by income in greater detail than has been presented in the past and dispels the myth that all uninsured workers in families with $50,000 or more in income are truly high-income individuals. The PDF for the above title, published in the March 2000 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the fulltext of another March 2000 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: "Health Insurance Coverage and the Near Elderly, 1998."
