The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) bring troubling news for children’s health coverage. After years of progress, the child uninsured rate rose again in 2024, reaching its highest level since 2014. As Joan Alker explains in her blog, these numbers signal that the progress made over the past years is eroding and children are paying the price.
Some of the key findings from the ACS data show the national increase in uninsured children, with more kids now going without health coverage, reversing gains made in part due to the disenrollment freeze during the pandemic. States with the largest coverage losses are often those that have not adopted policies to protect children and families during the unwinding process – Texas disenrolled 1.3 million children from Medicaid during the unwinding and nearly one quarter of all uninsured children in the nation now live there. States that expanded Medicaid and invested in outreach and enrollment assistance generally fared better than those that did not. You can learn more about these findings here.
To help readers explore these findings in greater depth, we also updated our State Data Hub. The hub now features the latest ACS child health coverage data at the state level including data by race and ethnicity, making it easy for stakeholders, journalists and policymakers to compare trends across the country. The state comparison tool allows viewers to compare states based on uninsured rates and state policy decisions.