Trends in Child Health Insurance Coverage: A Local Perspective.

The Journal of Applied Research on Children is brought to you for free and open access by CHILDREN AT RISK at DigitalCommons@The Texas Medical Center. It has a "cc by-nc-nd" Creative Commons license" (Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives) For more information, Introduction Over the past decade, employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) for children has dropped by 12% due to increasing health care costs and the declining US economy. 1 Concurrently, public health insurance eligibility for children has increased. A large body of literature has demonstrated the protective effect of public insurance for children at the national level during the decline in ESI. 2-4 While the proportion of low and middle-income children with ESI declined between 2000-2009, the percentage of these children who had public insurance increased substantially. As a result, the rate of low and middle-income children without insurance actually decreased (2.4%, 0.8% respectively). 2 A significant body of literature has also extensively described the relationship between the option of ESI and coverage type for children, with a lack of option for ESI being associated with a higher odds of public insurance.