Children's Uninsurance Fell between 2019 and 2021, but Progress Could Stall When Pandemic Protections Expire

The pandemic and associated job losses threatened to reduce employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and increase uninsurance among American families. Though such risks were higher for adults because of the long-standing generosity of public coverage policies for children, the severity and novelty of the pandemic also had the potential to exacerbate children's coverage losses that had occurred between 2016 and 2019 and to jeopardize decades of progress in reducing their uninsurance rate. In this brief, we explore changes in coverage status and type among children from birth to age 17 from 2019 to 2021. To do so, we use data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement and administrative data on children's enrollment in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Marketplace coverage through early 2022. We examine (1) changes between early 2019 and early 2021 to reflect the first year of the pandemic and the first round of pandemic recovery legislation passed in March 2020 and (2) changes from early 2021 through late 2021 and early 2022 to reflect continuing trends and initial responses to the second major federal recovery effort in March 2021