UNINSURED CALIFORNIANS ARE LOW-AND MODERATE-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES

Well over eight in 10 (85%) of the uninsured are workers and their spouses and children (Exhibit 5) — for a total of 5.8 million uninsured Californians in working families. Half (51%) are in families headed by at least one employee who works full time all year round — a total of 3.5 million uninsured full-time, full-year employees and their family members.

Many of these adults and children are in working families whose breadwinners do not have access to employment-based health insurance. As we will see in Part 4 of this report, this can be because their employer does not offer health benefits to any of its workers or because the employee is not eligible under the employer's rules. In other cases, individuals work for employers that do offer health benefits, but the employee finds the required premium contribution unaffordable.

FAMILY INCOMES OF UNINSURED CALIFORNIANS

The uninsured are a disproportionately low-income group — a characteristic with important implications for efforts to expand coverage. Among California's uninsured population, one-fourth (26%) had incomes below the federal poverty level and another 41% had family incomes between 100% and 249% of the federal poverty level in 1999 (Exhibit 6).

Thus, two-thirds of the uninsured have family incomes so low that they are unlikely to be able to afford any substantial contribution toward the costs of health insurance premiums. To make health insurance affordable for them, an employer or the government will need to pay most, if not all, of the cost. Only 17% of the uninsured had family incomes four times the poverty threshold or greater.

This distribution of the uninsured by family income is quite different from the income distribution of the state's nonelderly population — underscoring the higher risk of being uninsured among low- and moderate-income

UCLA CENTER FOR HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH 9

Over eight in 10 of the uninsured are workers and their family members