# Is there a statistician in the house? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 24, 2007, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247 "2007-01-24T15:44:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247/1 "2007-01-24T15:44:50Z")
Apparently this [PDF File](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/p60_231sa.pdf) contains all the information necessary to answer my question, but I’m too dumb to figure it out. I want to know (1) what percentage of Americans are both uninsured and below the poverty level, (2) what percentage are both uninsured and above the poverty level, (3) what percentage are both insured and below the poverty level, and (4) what percentage of each is Hispanic. So, that’s six discrete pieces of information. Are they to be found in that document? ---
**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247/2 "2007-01-24T15:53:44Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] Are they to be found in that document? [/QUOTE] I don’t see any raw data, just a discussion of the methods by which they gathered the data and how those methods effect the accuracy of their estimates. This is an appendix to a larger report (as referenced in the first sentence) and presumably that’s the report you want to be looking at. ---
**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247/3 "2007-01-24T16:51:43Z")
I was digging around for that original report, and I see that the Census Bureau has an interactive website where you can [design your own queries.](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstc/cps_table_creator.html) against their data. This makes it a pretty simple task. I came up with (totals in thousands) All total: 293,135 uninsured/below poverty: 11,465 (3.9%) uninsured/above poverty: 34,931 (11.9%) insured/below poverty: 25,485 (8.7%) Hispanics total: 43,020 uninsured/below poverty: 3,978 (9.2%) uninsured/above poverty: 10,093 (23.5%) insured/below poverty: 5,390 (12.5%) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247/4 "2007-01-24T22:57:05Z")
Thank you, Anson2995. Great link, too! ---
**Author:** ![Spiritus\_Mundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Spiritus\_Mundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiritus_Mundi)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-statistician-in-the-house/389247/5 "2007-01-24T23:38:27Z")
Another way to look at the data (using Anson’s numbers): …ALL…HISPANICS …293,135…43,020…14.7% Below poverty line…36,950…9,368 Insured…25,485…69.0%…5,390…57.5% Uninsured…11,465…31.0%…3,978…42.5% Above poverty line…256,185…33,652 Insured…221,254…86.4%…23,559…70.0% Uninsured…34,931…13.6%…10,093…30.0% The above shows more clearly (I think) both the relative impact of poverty on hispanics and health insurance _and_ the relative likelihood that a hispanic is insured, regardless of “poverty”, vs. the population norm. Alternatively, we could present it in a manner that shows what percentage of the un-insured are hispanic, compared to the overall population. …ALL…% of HISPANICS in TOTAL …293,135…43,020…14.7% Below poverty line…36,950…9,368…25.4% Insured…25,485…69.0%…5,390…21.1% Uninsured…11,465…31.0%…3,978…34.7% Above poverty line…256,185…33,652…13.1% Insured…221,254…86.4%…23,559…10.6% Uninsured…34,931…13.6%…10,093…28.9% Of course, one weakness of any of these presentations is that the poverty line is essentially an arbitraily chosen mark agaisnt which to “analyze” the distribution of insurance as a binomial. A more compelling treatment, I think, would recognize more “striations” both in insurance “value” and in income levels.