Health Insurance Coverage of Immigrants and Latinos in the Kansas City Metro Area

Latinos and immigrants are at least twice as likely to lack health insurance coverage as the overall population in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This gap that has significant implications for the region, as Latinos and immigrants will form an ever-growing share of the area’s labor force and tax base amid anticipated declines in the native-born, non-Latino population.

This brief offers a demographic profile of the immigrant and U.S.- and foreign-born Latino populations in the three Kansas City-area counties with the largest immigrant populations: Missouri’s Jackson County and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas. The brief also examines these populations’ health insurance coverage and gaps.

Overall, 161,000 residents in the three Kansas City metro counties with the largest immigrant populations—Johnson County; Jackson County, Missouri; and Wyandotte County, Kansas—are uninsured, with immigrants of all origins and Latinos accounting for 38 percent (61,000) of the total. MPI’s analysis draws on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, county health departments, and local safety-net health-care providers.

“Given the important role immigrants and their U.S.-born children play in Kansas City-area communities and the future of the regional economy, it makes economic sense to maximize health insurance coverage for immigrant and Latino families,” the authors find.