New fact sheet shows education matters for health insurance coverage

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped insure millions of people across the U.S. since 2013. Despite lower uninsured rates, differences in coverage persist across several factors, such as race and ethnicity, employment status, and income. According to a new fact sheet by UCLA researchers, education plays an important role in health insurance status independent from its impact on household income.

Using data from the American Community Survey from 2013 to 2018, researchers looked at the percentage of adults aged 18 to 64 years old who were uninsured based on their educational attainment. They found that those with incomes less than 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), $12,060 for an individual/$24,600 for a family of four, continued to have the highest uninsured rates in 2018, despite coverage gains made since the ACA’s implementation in 2013.

They found that in 2013, uninsured levels are the lowest among those with the highest incomes, but that the differences by educational level are the greatest in this income group (400% FPL or above, which is $48,240 for an individual, $98,400 for a family of four) and these disparities remained in 2018.

“Our findings show that in addition to affordability, educational differences should also be considered in looking more closely at differences in coverage rates,” said Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health and Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“Future research should explore why education plays a crucial role in being insured, and whether this points to differences in awareness of available options, health care values, employer-based coverage, and other factors,” he said.

This study was conducted jointly by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Claremont Graduate University with support from the A-Mark Foundation.

About the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. UCLA CHPR improves the public’s health through high quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that informs effective policymaking. UCLA CHPR is the home of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) and is part of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For more information, visit healthpolicy.ucla.edu.