SHADAC has updated six measures in State Health Compare to include estimates for 2016 for each state. The updated measures include:
- Health Insurance Coverage
- People with High Medical Care Cost Burden
- Unemployment Rate
- Income Inequality
- Adult Educational Attainment
- Children Considered to be Poor
State Health Compare provides a deep dive into the first measure, allowing users to explore insurance coverage status and type across a wide range of socioeconomic factors such as age, citizenship, education, income, health status, and race/ethnicity. State estimates for high medical spending and adult educational attainment are available by income and race/ethnicity; estimates of children in poverty are available by race/ethnicity; and unemployment and income inequality are available for states as a whole.
Data Highlight: High Out-of-Pocket Medical Spending in Minnesota in 2016
State Health Compare allows users to examine equity at the state level and between populations of interest. For example, when considering the proportion of people with a high medical care cost burden (i.e., family out-of-pocket medical spending exceeded 10% of annual income), Minnesota is a case where the data reveal important equity issues: 24.4% of all Minnesotans faced high medical spending in 2016. However, this number rose to 35.3% for the state’s Hispanic/Latino population. This percentage is significantly higher than that of the Minnesota’s white population, at 24.1%, and that of the Hispanic/Latino population nationwide, at 19.1%.1
Data Sources
The State Health Compare estimates for insurance coverage, income inequality, adult educational attainment, and children in poverty come from the American Community Survey (ACS). The estimates of medical costs come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), and the unemployment estimates are generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics using the CPS.
| Significance Testing Using State Health Compare |
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A recent SHADAC brief explains how to test for statistically significant differences between populations of interest using data from State Health Compare. The brief (1) explains how to conduct a quick visual scan of statistically significant differences using the State Health Compare’s margins of error output and (2) provides step-by-step instructions for using margins of error to conduct a more robust test of statistical significance through hypothesis testing. Access the brief. |
1 Differences are statistically significant at a 95% confidence level.