PRESS RELEASE

Contact:
Jason Sanford, Director of Communications
Health Policy Institute of Ohio
(614) 545-0754

Survey Shows More Ohioans in Poverty
Contributes to Increase in State’s Medicaid Caseload
and Higher Demands on Safety Net Providers

According to results from the 1998 and 2004 Ohio Family Health Surveys, Ohio’s overall poverty rate increased by 5 percentage points, rising from 12.1% in 1998 to 17.1% in 2004. This means an estimated 580,021 more Ohioans lived with incomes at or below poverty in 2004.

The percent of children living in poverty rose at an even faster rate, increasing by 6.8 percentage points from 14.2% in 1998 to 21% in 2004. As a result, an estimated 209,155 more Ohio children are living in families with incomes at or below poverty.

Despite these increases, Ohio’s uninsured rate did not increase, due to expansion of health care coverage for children under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and outreach efforts by Ohio’s Medicaid program. The increase in poverty is likely one of the key factors for the dramatic increase in Medicaid enrollment in the state since 2000 and for the continuing strong demand and use of services for Ohio’s safety net and social services programs.

The sources of this data comparison are the 1998 and 2004 Ohio Family Health Surveys (OFHS). The 2004 OFHS was conducted by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) through ORCA Macro and is one of the largest and most comprehensive state-level health and insurance surveys ever conducted in the United States, with nearly 40,000 household interviews completed. The 1998 survey was conducted by the Gallup Organization with approximately 16,000 Ohio households.

For the complete analysis of this data, including county-level poverty and uninsured estimates, go to http://www.healthpolicyohio.org/publications/ofhs.html.

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio is an independent, nonpartisan organization that forecasts health trends, analyzes key health issues, and communicates current research to Ohio policymakers, legislators, and others. For more information on the Institute, call (614) 224-4950 or go to http://www.healthpolicyohio.org.

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