The number of Americans without health insurance coverage dropped from 13.3% in 2013 to 10.4% in 2014, the New York Times reports. That means that 8.8 million more people now have health insurance.
Officials say that this decrease in uninsured americans is largely due to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, but the Census Bureau found that health insurance coverage increased in both the private and public sectors.
There was an increase in coverage among all racial groups, with about a 4% growth for African Americans, Asians and Hispanics, and a 2.1% growth for non-Hispanic Caucasians.
Although the number of uninsured Americans dropped, the number of Americans below the poverty line did not. The median household income last year was $53,660 and the poverty rate was 14.8%, putting 46.7 million people below the poverty line.
This marks the fourth year in a row we saw no statistically significant change in the poverty rate. In fact, there was a slight increase. Coins2Day reported last year that, according to the Bureau, the poverty rate was 14.5%, which is equivalent to about 45.3 million people. So, between 2013 and 2014, nearly 1.5 million people fell below the poverty line.
