While COVID-19 job losses may have led to uninsurance for some Americans, it doesn't appear that children's insurance rates were negatively impacted. In fact, new research suggests that children's uninsurance rates actually fell between 2019 and 2021.

The report, published by Urban Institute this week, looks at survey data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and Current Population Survey (CPS) to determine insurance rates for children. It found that childhood uninsurance dropped to 4.1% overall in 2021 from 5.1% in 2019, according to the NHIS. That means that approximately 700,000 children gained insurance coverage during that period.

Notably, the data didn't indicate a gradual decrease in the number of uninsured children over the stretch of time. Instead, uninsurance rates remained steady between early 2019 and early 2021, before rates saw a significant drop in late 2021, down to 3.5% for the final quarter of 2021 compared to 4.6% in the first quarter.