This report uses longitudinal data from the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine the health insurance coverage of people from 1996 to 1999. During the 48-month survey period, respondents reported their health insurance status for each month, providing the opportunity to observe how long people are covered by health insurance or how long they go without coverage.

This report focuses on the dynamics of health insurance coverage and how patterns vary across economic and demographic groups. The number of months without health insurance varied for different groups, 96.7 percent of all people were covered for at least 1 month of the 48-month study period and 32.1 percent lacked health insurance at least 1 month.¹

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¹ The estimates in this report are based on responses from a sample of the population. As with all surveys, estimates may vary from the actual values because of sampling variation or other factors. All comparisons made in this report have undergone statistical testing, and all comparisons are significant at the 90-percent confidence level unless otherwise noted.