State Plates
The Illinois Health Plate
In Illinois, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black Illinois in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and Illinois's distribution figures — 2 million Black residents, 14 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
For Illinois, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. About one in ten Black Americans — roughly 9 to 10 percent in the Census Bureau's annual coverage report — has no health insurance at all, a rate above the national figure and above the White rate. In Illinois, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national coverage pattern on one side, the state's system on the other.
For Illinois, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Rates in this article are for the full population unless stated; nonelderly rates run higher than the all-ages figures because Medicare covers nearly everyone past 65 — one reason the Black uninsured problem is concentrated among working-age adults, as the age breakdown below shows. For Illinois, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national coverage pattern on one side, the state's system on the other.
For Illinois, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Employer-sponsored insurance is the largest single source, covering about half of Black Americans, through their own jobs or a family member's — a share below the White figure, reflecting the employment and occupational data of this reference: fewer Black workers in the large-firm, high-benefit sectors, more in service, temporary, and small-employer jobs where offers of coverage are thinner. The comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national midpoint on one side, Illinois's households on the other.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Illinois; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In Illinois, health measures are survey-based, so the plate carries the survey sources on its face and treats the national pattern as the frame inside which state health agencies publish their own state-level readings.
The Population Behind the Plate
The coverage figures take their local form in Illinois, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. Illinois holds about 2 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 1.8 million, or 14 percent. Only as it sharpens the local record does the general one matter here — and the local record is Illinois's, in the table.
In Illinois, that national coverage pattern runs through the state's own insurance market and care system, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Springfield, the state capital, is about a fifth Black, with a community reaching back to the free Black settlements of the 1820s. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Illinois.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Illinois Health Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2 Million. The plate states Illinois's record beside its table and lets the record speak.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Illinois Health Plate. Its table records Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%. In Illinois, read with its table, the plate states the record and lets the record speak.
For The Illinois Health Plate, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. How this plate is read, for Illinois: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%. The material is asked only for what it can state, and nothing beyond it is claimed for Illinois.
In Illinois, a closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Illinois are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. For Illinois, a reader who needs the underlying counts will find them in the published tables of the source named below, from which every figure here descends without alteration beyond the rounding the source itself applies. This note is written for the health plate; the companion plates of the same place carry notes of their own.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 14% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 15.6% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans without health insurance coverage, approximately | 1 in 10 |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans covered by Medicaid, approximately — and about one in three Black children | 1 in 5 |
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System; U.S. Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (Current Population Survey). Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.