December 22, 2010
December 22, 2010: The National Center for Health Statistics has released their semi-annual update to the wireless substitution estimates, reflecting the first half of 2010. The publication, "Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January - June 2010." shows that more than one-fourth of households (26.6%) have only wireless telephones. This is an increase of 2.1 percentage points since the since half of 2009. The prevalence is even higher for children, with 29.0 percent living in households with only wireless phone service.
This issue is a concern for health services researchers because we rely heavily on telephone-based surveys for information; this is particularly true for state surveys. Cell phone samples are now often included in these surveys, but these respondents are typically much more costly to survey and pose complications when trying to merge cell phone and landline cases to produce population estimates.
More information on this topic is available in SHADAC's issue brief, "The Impact of Wireless-only Households on State Surveys of Health Insurance Coverage."