For many residents of Wisconsin, the recession has dealt a double blow. They have lost both their jobs and their health insurance.
A new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (WCCF)examines the impacts of the recession on families across the state, based on measures such as unemployment, income, poverty and access to health insurance. The analysis includes data for each of 23 Wisconsin counties, as well as for the state as a whole.
The Council’s analysis found that the recession has adversely affected Wisconsin residents in a number of ways, including:
- Unemployment rose from 5.1 percent in 2008 to 8.2 percent in 2009, as shown in the chart.
- The poverty rate rose from 10.4 percent to 12.4 percent.
- Median household income fell by $1,949, or by 3.8 percent.
The sharp increase in unemployment and poverty during the recession makes it important for federal lawmakers to extend some of the relief for low-income families initiated in 2009. In particular, it’s important to continue unemployment insurance benefits for the longer-term unemployed, which have lapsed.
Although there has been a gradual erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance since at least 2000, that trend accelerated during the recession. The WCCF analysis found that from 2008 to 2009, an estimated 141,300 Wisconsinites lost their private insurance coverage.
The Census Bureau data show that even though the portion of the Wisconsin population with private health insurance fell by 2.9 percentage points last year, the state’s BadgerCare Plus program picked up most of the slack. It grew by 109,400 people from 2008 to 2009, holding the increase in the uninsured to 0.6 percentage points.
