Working families spend nearly $4,000 annually on health care: Study

Axios – Wednesday, January 14, 2026
By Caitlin Owens

The typical U.S. working family spends nearly $4,000 per year on health care, including their share of insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, according to a new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Why it matters: That’s just the median amount, and plenty of families pay thousands more. But it goes a long way in explaining why health care is at the forefront of voters’ “affordability” concerns.

Details: The study used Census data from 2024 and defines “working families” as those with at least one worker between the ages of 18 and 64.

This means it includes families that get their insurance from employers, the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and Medicaid.
The big picture: There’s huge variation in how much families pay for health care, and the burden of that spending depends on their income.

As a result, it makes sense to look at spending as a dollar amount and as a percentage of income, which the authors of the report did.

They classified families that spend more than 10% of their before-tax family income on health care as being “cost burdened.”

By the numbers: More than 1 in 8 working families were cost-burdened in 2024, per the report.

Among the lowest-income fifth of working families, more than one in five were cost-burdened.

The top 10% of health care spenders spent $14,800 or more per year on health care.

Between the lines: The report found that what families spend on health care correlates strongly with income — the more money a family makes, the more it spends on care.

Health expenditures also closely correspond with the level of education of the worker in the family, with more educated workers’ families paying more for care.

Families with white workers spend more on care than families with Black, Hispanic or Asian workers.

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