Record Coverage for Kids: 95% of U.S. Children Have Health Insurance

The per­cent­age of chil­dren with­out health insur­ance has hit a his­toric low, accord­ing to new data released by the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau.

The data, which rep­re­sent the most recent Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey results avail­able, reveal that just 5% of chil­dren under the age of 19 — 3.6 mil­lion kids total — lacked health insur­ance in 2016.

Health insur­ance sta­tus is an impor­tant mea­sure­ment of child well-being. Med­ical insur­ance cov­er­age helps sup­port a child’s healthy devel­op­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic growth. It also helps safe­guard fam­i­lies from finan­cial dev­as­ta­tion should a child fall seri­ous­ly or chron­i­cal­ly ill.

Among the 95% of chil­dren with access to health insur­ance: 60% had pri­vate insur­ance and the remain­ing 40% had pub­lic insurance.

At the state lev­el, all but five states report­ed a drop in the per­cent­age of chil­dren with pri­vate health insur­ance. Despite these drops, the rate of chil­dren who had pub­lic health insur­ance rose, help­ing to ensure that these chil­dren still had med­ical insur­ance cov­er­age and access to care.