Income is a payment in the form of money given to a person or a business in return for a service or a product provided or invested. It may also be money coming from a government benefit, a gift received, or through one’s pension.
Poverty is having an income that fall below a certain set of poverty measures. In the United States, the federal poverty measures have two slightly different versions: poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines. Poverty thresholds are the “original version of the federal poverty measure” according to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). It is mainly to calculate official poverty population figures. Poverty guidelines, on the other hand, are a simpler version of poverty thresholds and are mainly for administrative purposes such as financial eligibility determination for certain federal programs.
Health insurance is the contract between an insurer and an insured where the former would compensate some or all of the healthcare costs of the latter in exchange for receiving a premium. To be more specific, health insurers shoulder medical, surgical, prescription drug, and at times, dental expenses that were incurred by the insured.
What is the relationship of income, health insurance, and poverty?
Recent national data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Disease Control (CDC), and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continue to show a strong and persistent relationship between income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States. Lower-income families consistently spend a much larger share of their household income on healthcare than higher-income households—even when they have employer-sponsored insurance.
Surveys from 2023–2024 show that families earning below 200% of the federal poverty level face disproportionately high premium and deductible burdens, often devoting more than 10–15% of their income to healthcare costs, compared with about 6% among higher-income families. Out-of-pocket spending is especially burdensome for low-income adults with chronic conditions, who are significantly more likely to skip medications or medical appointments due to cost.
Data from the 2024 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) further highlight that more than half of uninsured adults live in households below 200% of the poverty line, with the highest concentrations in states that did not expand Medicaid.
Being uninsured continues to have profound health consequences: CDC surveys show that uninsured individuals are four times more likely to delay or forgo care because of cost and far less likely to receive preventive services such as screenings and chronic disease monitoring.
Together, these findings underscore how income inequality and poverty directly shape coverage gaps and access to care, reinforcing a cycle in which low-income households face higher disease burden, greater financial strain, and poorer health outcomes.
This presentation shows data on income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States based on data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau