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The health coverage of low-income workers represents an area of continuing disparities in the United States system of health insurance. Using the 2001 California Health Interview Survey, we estimate the effect of low-income wage earners' citizenship and gender on the odds of obtaining primary employment-based health insurance (EBHI), dependent EBHI, public program coverage, and coverage from any source. We find that noncitizen men and women who comprise 40% of California's low-income workforce, share the disadvantage of much lower rates of insurance coverage, compared to naturalized and U.S.-born citizens. However, poor coverage rates of noncitizen men, regardless of permanent residency status, result from the cumulative disadvantage in obtaining dependent EBHI and public insurance. If public policies designed to provide a health care safety net fail to address the health care coverage needs of low-wage noncitizens, health disparities will continue to increase in this group that contributes essentially to the U.S. economy.

Asthma is a chronic lung condition characterized by wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and nighttime or early morning coughing; it has been on the rise in the United States over the past two decades. In California, about three million children and adults who have ever been diagnosed with asthma also experienced asthma symptoms at least once in 2002. This policy brief provides data for California legislative districts to highlight the variation in asthma symptom prevalence for children and adults across the state. Asthma symptom prevalence rates at the district level are estimates created by a small-area methodology, based on rates from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2001) that are applied to population data from the 2000 Census and 2002 California Department of Finance. This first-of-its-kind sub-county data are relevant for policy makers, advocates, and medical providers to illuminate the problem of asthma throughout California and within local communities.

Nearly 1.5 million California children ages 0-17 did not have health insurance coverage for all or part of the year in 2002. However, almost two-thirds of these uninsured children were eligible for one of the state's two public health insurance programs--Medi-Cal or Healthy Families. Uninsured children who were eligible but not enrolled in these programs were spread throughout the state, with wide variations between local areas. This policy brief presents data on children ages 0-17 in California who did not have health insurance coverage for some or all of the year and who were eligible for the Medi-Cal or Healthy Families programs. These data highlight the geographic variations in children's uninsured eligibility rates for state Assembly, Senate and Congressional districts, as well as for counties and the Los Angeles Service Planning Areas (SPAs). Uninsured-eligibility rates at local levels were estimated by applying a small-area methodology to multiple data sources, including the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2001), 2000-2002 Current Population Surveys, and the 2000 Census.