Georgetown University Report Finds the Number of Uninsured Children Grew at Alarming Rate
A new report from McCourt’s Center for Children and Families finds that children across America are increasingly living without insurance, even during a period of economic growth when children should be gaining health coverage.
A new report finds that the number of children without health coverage in the United States increased by about 726,000 between 2016 and 2019, bringing the total to over 4 million uninsured children nationwide reversing years of national progress. Much of the gain in coverage that children made as a consequence of the Affordable Care Act’s major coverage expansions, implemented in 2014, has now been eliminated.
“For decades, children’s health coverage had been a national success story, but the data show that during the years of the Trump Administration the trend went in the wrong direction,” said Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Executive Director Joan Alker. “What’s worse, the numbers of children losing coverage accelerated from 2018 to 2019 during a time when unemployment was very low. The situation is likely worse today.”
This is the 10th annual report on uninsured children published by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, an independent, nonpartisan policy and research center founded in 2005 with a mission to expand and improve high-quality, affordable coverage for America’s children and families.
The report analyzes single-year estimates of summary data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) from 2016 through 2019. For more information about the report, visit ccf.georgetown.edu.
This release was originally shared by ccf.georgetown.edu on October 9, 2020.