Study: Immigrants making up larger percentage of uninsured

The percentage of immigrants among the ranks of the uninsured grew by nearly 10 percent between 1994 and 2006, according to a new study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (Source: “Study: Uninsured population grows with immigration,” Kansas City Star, Aug. 5, 2008).

Native-born Americans still account for nearly three-fourths of those without insurance, but the percentage of the uninsured who are immigrants increased from 18.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006. Those percentages translate to about 12.3 million immigrants and 34.1 million native-born Americans who do not have health coverage.

The study found that the longer immigrants stayed in the country, the more likely they were to have insurance. While nearly half (slightly more than 46 percent) of foreign-born non-citizens did not have insurance, 19.9 percent of immigrants who had gained citizenship were uninsured. The study used Census data and did not differentiate the legal or illegal status of immigrants.

An executive summary is available on the EBRI’s Web site.