By Tara Mancini

It’s a beautiful day here in the nation’s capital and the sunny weather seems to match the uplifting news this morning that estimates from the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS) reveal that both the national uninsured rate overall (14.8%) and the national uninsured rate for children (7.2%) dropped by a small but significant amount (.3 percentage points) from 2011. This echoes the slow, but steady decline in the uninsured rate that we saw on Tuesday from the Current Population Survey (CPS).

Given that no state has shown a statistically significant decline in their poverty rate over the last 12 years, the decrease in the uninsured rate is especially meaningful. It reinforces how the ACA is already working to achieve its goal of covering the uninsured.

Certainly, it should also motivate us to continue to strive to address disparities among uninsured children. For instance, in 2012, school-aged children made up a higher share of uninsured children than those under age 6. We also know that there is a lot of variation in uninsured rates at the state level. Similar to last year, Nevada has the highest rate of uninsured children (16.6%), while Massachusetts had the lowest (1.4%) although neither represents a statistically significant change in the rate from 2011.  (Click here to see the uninsured rate for children in your state.)

While Nevada has the highest rate of uninsured children, the state has recently taken steps that should connect more children with coverage such as:

• Eliminating the 6-month waiting period for its Children’s Health Insurance Program.
• Effectively putting out the welcome mat for low-income children and families to get coverage together through its acceptance of the ACA’s Medicaid option.
• Engaging in more robust outreach and enrollment efforts.

In addition to the summary data, the Census Bureau published a new brief examining the change in the share of the population covered by public and private insurance for the population under 65 from 2008 to 2012.  The data reveal significant declines in private insurance and increases in public insurance from 2008-2010 and 2010-2012, and that in the latter years the growth in public coverage offset the loss of private coverage.

Be on the lookout for our more comprehensive analysis of the ACS health insurance data to be released in November.

Editors Note: The American Community Survey marks the third Census Bureau survey to release estimates measuring health insurance coverage since August. Here is a quick overview of the surveys, as it is easy to become confused about the different sources of data. The ACS has a large sample size, much bigger than the CPS, therefore it provides more reliable state estimates on health insurance than the CPS. In addition, the national health insurance estimates usually differ between the ACS and the CPS, although they tend to trend in the same direction.  It is important to remember that these surveys have different reference periods for questions on health insurance. You can brush-up on the differences between the two surveys with this comparison chart from the Census Bureau.

The ACS estimates released today also provide reliable 2012 estimates for every geographic area with a population of 65,000 or more. In contrast, the Small Area Health Insurance Estimates released in August provide 2011 estimates for every county in the U.S. by modeling data from the ACS and a combination of other administrative sources. These estimates are not as timely as the ACS and they do not provide estimates on health coverage by source like the ACS.