Stability of Health Care Coverage Among Low-Income Working Women (Editorial) (Editorial‪)‬

Research has demonstrated that health insurance coverage improves health care for low-income adults and their children (Almeida, Dubay, & Ko, 2001; Lillie-Blanton, 1999; Salganicoff & Wyn, 1999). Yet, despite efforts by the federal government to improve low-income health care coverage through Medicaid and related program expansions in the late 1980s and 1990s, coverage for adults eroded (Holahan & Kim, 2000; Mishel, Bernstein, & Schmitt, 2001). Of the more than 44 million Americans without health care coverage in 1998, about two-thirds had incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level (Holahan & Kim). The implementation of welfare reforms through state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (P.L. 104-193) programs may exacerbate this problem, especially for women who leave welfare for jobs and exhaust transitional Medicaid benefits before they obtain employer-based coverage (Anderson & Gryzlak, 2002; Redmond, 2001). The growing prominence of female, single-parent families and the marginalization of jobs in an increasingly global marketplace also raise questions about coverage prospects for low-income working women in general (Davis, Aguilar, &Jackson, 1998; Keigher & Lowery, 1998). Understanding the determinants of health coverage is critical if viable health care policies for low-income women are to be developed. In addition, because low-income women often labor in irregular or temporary jobs, measures of health care stability over time are needed to provide meaningful indicators of health coverage circumstances. This article addresses these issues by examining the relative importance of various factors to the stability of health care coverage for a sample of low-income working women, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY).