health
No health insurance (adults 18–64)
Why this matters
No health insurance measures the share of working-age adults, ages 18 to 64, who currently have no health coverage. This age group is the focus because most children and older adults can get coverage through other programs, leaving working-age adults most exposed to gaps.
Coverage matters for both health and money. People without insurance are more likely to skip checkups, screenings, and needed treatment, which can let problems grow more serious. A single emergency can also lead to large bills and debt. Uninsured rates tend to be higher among lower-income people and some racial and ethnic groups.
Because local survey data are limited, these are modeled estimates that approximate coverage in each area: best read as the level in each year, not as year-to-year change (the CDC does not support using them as a trend).
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- KFF — Key Facts About the Uninsured Population kff.org
Research fact sheet on who is uninsured, why, and the effects on care and costs.
- CDC PLACES — Prevention measure definitions cdc.gov
CDC’s official definition of the lack-of-insurance measure for adults 18–64.
- County Health Rankings — Uninsured countyhealthrankings.org
Why coverage matters for care and finances, and its data source.
About the data
Model-based small-area estimates from the CDC PLACES project (2018–2023), which uses BRFSS survey data and multilevel regression & poststratification to estimate adult prevalence for every Census tract. Each estimate has a confidence interval; values with high uncertainty are flagged.
Source: CDC PLACES (model-based small-area estimates).