2021 American Community Survey Data: Connecticut Sees an Increase in Health Insurance Coverage

Health insurance coverage in Connecticut has changed from 2010 to 2021, and in this post, we take a look at both state and town-level trends.  

We used town-level data from the recently released 2017-2021 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, as well as the 2012-2016 ACS 5-year estimates, and the American Community Survey 1-year estimates for state-level trends. Please note that when we mention an increase or decrease in a metric or statistic, we are referring to a statistically significant change. Tables that include MoE columns refer to the Margins of Error. More information on these important concepts can be found in the Notes section at the end of this data story.  

You can explore additional ACS data with our interactive tool, which covers a variety of topics, including economic, demographic, education, language, and many other topics, disaggregated by town along with comparisons to previous 5-year periods. 

Connecticut Residents with Health Insurance: Statewide Trends 

According to the 2021 ACS 1-year estimates, 2021 ACS 1-year estimates, 94.8% of Connecticut residents had health insurance coverage, compared to only 84.5% in the United States. 

The percentage of Connecticut residents with health insurance has been trending upward since 2010. In 2010, 90.9% of residents had health insurance. In 2021, this had risen to 94.8%. As shown in the chart to the right, it hasn’t been a steady increase each year, but there were smaller increases and decreases along the way. 

The Affordable Care Act was signed in 2010 and its changes to healthcare law were implemented through 2014. Between 2013 and 2016, health insurance coverage increased steadily from 90.6% of Connecticut residents covered in 2013 to 95.1% in 2016. Over the following four years, the rate crept down by one percentage point to 94.1% in 2019. The statistically significant improvement from 94.1% in 2019 to 94.8% in 2021 is encouraging. 

Insurance Coverage by Town 

There was variation between Connecticut towns. Bethlehem (99.5%), Morris (99.3%), Coventry (99.2%), and South Windsor (99.2%) had the highest rates of health insurance coverage according to the 2021 ACS 5-year estimates. These towns saw statistically significant improvements in health insurance rates in the 2021 ACS 5-year estimates, compared to the 2016 ACS 5-year estimates. 

Danbury (86.1%), Norwalk (86.3%), and Bridgeport (86.7%) had the lowest rates of health insurance coverage in the state. Although these communities also had the lowest rates of coverage according to the 2016 ACS 5-year estimates, each experienced statistically significant improvements in this time frame: Norwalk increased by 5 percentage points, Bridgeport by 4.2, and Danbury by 3.2. 

You can explore the town-level 2012-2016 and 2017-2021 ACS data in the table below. 

Diving Deeper: Changes in Health Insurance Coverage Rates 

Connecticut’s rate of residents with health insurance improved significantly by 1.9 percentage points, from 92.9% in the 2016 ACS 5-year estimates to 94.8% according to the 2021 ACS 5-year estimates. 

Fifty-seven towns in Connecticut had statistically significant improvements as well. Forty-three towns had rates of insured residents increase by more than the state’s 1.9 percentage points. Canterbury, Willington, and Sterling each increased their coverage rates by seven percentage points or more. Norfolk’s rate of residents with health insurance also increased from 92.3% in the 2016 ACS 5-year estimates to 99.0% according to the 2021 ACS 5-year estimates. 

Conversely, 18 towns had their rates of insured residents decrease by one percentage point or more, but the decrease was not statistically significant in any of these communities. 

In addition to Bridgeport’s 4.2 percentage point increase in residents with health insurance coverage, Connecticut’s other largest cities also experience statistically significant increases. Stamford (3.1), New Haven (3.8), Hartford (3.1), and Waterbury (3.5) each had insurance rates increase by more than three percentage points and now have rates of 90.0% or more. 

Notes 

The ACS is a survey of a sample of residents, not all residents. Therefore, ACS estimates have margins of error which provide information about the precision of the estimate. Roughly speaking, we have 90% certainty that the “real” value is around the estimated value plus-or-minus the margin of error. In this blog post, we show the margins of error after each estimate in the tables.

Additionally, we report the statistical significance of changes from the 2012-2016 to the 2017-2021 ACS 5-year estimates. If a change is not statistically significant, this means there is insufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual change is different from zero.     

For More Information 

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