Households with Children Currently without Health Insurance
7% of Mid-Hudson Valley households with children include at least one child who is currently without a health insurance plan. In terms of numbers, this means that of the 148,682 estimated households with children in the Mid-Hudson Valley approximately 10,400 include children who are uninsured.
These proportions have not changed since 2002.
At the county level, there are modest differences. Greene County has the highest proportion of families where at least one child is currently uninsured, 12%.
In Sullivan, Columbia, Orange, and Ulster Counties, the rate of uninsured children is nearly one in ten. 9% of households with children in Sullivan County and 8% in Columbia, Ulster, and Orange Counties include a child without health insurance.
Dutchess and Putnam Counties have the lowest rate of households with uninsured children in the region. 5% of households with children in both these counties have at least one member under age 18 who is without health insurance at this time.
Not surprisingly, Mid-Hudson Valley households with uninsured children have a much lower annual income than households with children overall.
While 7% of Mid-Hudson Valley households with children have at least one member younger than eighteen without health care coverage, this proportion triples for poor households with children. 22% of households with children that have an income of $15,000 or less have uninsured children.
The proportion of uninsured children declines as household income increases. Households with children earning less than $30,000 annually are two and a half times more likely to have a child without health coverage than the average household with children. This compares with households with an income of $50,000 or more that are less than half as likely to have children who lack health insurance.
Understandably, households with children who lack health insurance are more at risk financially than other Mid-Hudson Valley households with children. Households with children who are currently uninsured are twice as likely to report they could not pay for food, housing, utility bills, or medical treatment on at least one occasion in the past year. 66% of households with children who are uninsured have faced economic hardship in the past year compared with 31% of Mid-Hudson Valley households with children as a whole.
Younger parents have more difficulty than their older peers providing health insurance for their children. 11% of parents age eighteen to thirty-five have children without a current health plan while 5% of parents over age thirty-five have uninsured children.
Single parents are similarly hard pressed. 12% of single parents have a child who is uninsured.
Although household income is a major factor in determining whether or not families with children have health insurance, race is a factor, as well. Latino children are slightly more likely than white and African American children to be uninsured. One in ten Latino households with children have at least one child who is uninsured compared with 7% of white households with children and 5% of African American families with children.
