Health insurance coverage is critical to accessing health care, yet disparities exist in coverage rates across the population. Coverage losses in the wake of the Great Recession may have further deepened these preexisting disparities.

Only longitudinal analysis can identify rates of health insurance loss; cross-sectional analysis reflects net change due to both entrances and exits from coverage.

This analysis uses the 2008 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to evaluate the risk of private health insurance loss between August 2008 through December 2011, relative to many socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.