Poverty and poor health: Can health care reform narrow the rich-poor gap? Poverty and poor health in the United States

It has been well established that income inequality and poverty in the United States are high and continue to increase, especially since 2000. There is also empirical evidence of a link between poor health and poverty. Figure 1 shows the proportion of individuals (or, in the case of children, their parents) self-reporting “poor” or “fair” general health, by age group and income quintile. For every age group, those with lower incomes tend to report poorer health, and the difference increases over time until the age group right before Medicare eligibility. For the age group that is eligible for Medicare, poor or fair health decreases for the lowest income quintile, thus somewhat narrowing the gap. Part of the explanation for this change is likely selective mortality; a greater proportion of the people in the poorest health may have died before reaching the oldest age bracket.