Community, Race, and Coverage Rates: An Analysis of Health Insurance Take-Up Rates by Neighborhood Composition

Abstract

While social networks and community composition have been examined in the context of many health outcomes, this study is the first to investigate the relationship between community composition and health insurance take-up rates. This study employs data from two supplements of the 2005 US Current Population Survey. Four different measures of insurance coverage and eligibility are compared against proportions of immigrants and Hispanics within metropolitan FIPS codes. It finds a small, positive relationship between immigrant density and take-up rates for immigrants among the subsample of workers with access to employer-sponsored insurance. This work provides novel evidence that an immigrant's likelihood of purchasing health insurance increases with the percentage of immigrants who live in their neighborhood.