Project 4

Below is a sketch of health insurance coverage by state for 2008. The data is from the Kaiser Family Foundation http://www.statehealthfacts.org/. Figure 1 plots State spending per Capita and the percentage of the non-elderly population without health coverage. Alaska clearly has a strong effect on the regression line, so lines are given with and without Alaska. There is a lot of variation about the mean, however from the plot there does seem to be a middling association between state spending and health coverage. Figure 2 plots poverty level. Here we see a rather strong relationship. Certainly this is to be expected. However there are some states which are clearly performing above or below the trend such as Texas or Massachusetts. Figures 3 and 4 are looking at some of the regional variation in health coverage trends. In figure 4 rather than poverty level I have plotted the unemployment rate by state. In figures 3 and 4, there seems to be a different dynamic in the South as compared to the rest of the nation. In figure 3, the downward sloping line for the west is again being caused by Alaska.