Census Bureau Releases 2011 Health Insurance Estimates for All U.S. Counties

August 29, 2013: The US Census Bureau has released 2011 Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) for all counties and states.  The SAHIE program is the only source of single-year health insurance estimates for every county in the U.S.  Estimates are available for each county by sex, age, and Federal Poverty Level (FPL).  Race/ethnicity information is available at the state level. 

Highlights

• County-level uninsured rates among the nonelderly (ages 0 to 64) in 2011 ranged from a low of 3.1 percent in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, to a high of 46.0 percent in Aleutians East Borough, Alaska. 
   
• Twenty-four percent of U.S. counties (759 out of 3,143) saw significant changes in uninsurance from 2008 to 2011.  Of these, 432 saw a significant increase in uninsurance, and 327 saw a significant decrease. 
   
• Counties with the highest rates of uninsurance among the nonelderly (ages 0 to 64) were concentrated mostly in the Southern and Western Census Regions of the U.S. (predominantly in south Florida, southern Georgia, southwest Arkansas, Texas, northwest New Mexico, southern Colorado, Montana, Idaho, southwest Nevada, and Alaska). 
   
• Counties with the lowest rates of uninsurance were concentrated mostly in the Midwestern and Northeastern Census Regions (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the counties along the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border).  Low rates of uninsured were also found in counties in the extreme northeastern portion of the South, in particular the counties located within the Baltimore and District of Columbia metropolitan areas.

Methods

SAHIE are created using statistical models that combine survey data with population estimates and administrative records.  SHADAC Brief #26 provides an overview of how the SAHIE are developed as well as a comparison of the SAHIE model-based methodology to that used by the American Community Survey (ACS; see Table 2).