A growing academic attention has been paid to the health effects of Internet use among older adults. However, the relationship between Internet use and health among older adults in China remains to be studied further. On the one hand, existing research is still controversial on this issue. On the other hand, the underlying mechanism of how Internet use affects the health of older adults has not been fully explored. This article examined the relationship between Internet use and health among older adults with the mediating role of social capital in China based on the 2018 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). This study reveals that Internet use has a positive association with the health of older adults, and the positive effects of internet use among older adults are heterogeneous in age and residential location. In addition, this study also demonstrates that social capital plays a partial mediating role between Internet use and physical health among older adults. It is important for the government to take effective measures to expand Internet use and enhance social capital among older adults.

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This paper draws support from the 2018 wave of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS 2018) and uses unconditional quantile regression, re-centered influence function (RIF) decomposition, linear structural equation modelling, extended regression modelling and censored regression to explore the heterogeneity of the impact of Internet use on the psychological well-being of Chinese non-agricultural and agricultural hukou holders. We find that Internet use better improves the psychological well-being of non-agricultural hukou holders, thereby widening the gap in psychological well-being between urban and rural residents in China. Through RIF decomposition, we observe that, except for the 10th quantile, the expansion effect of Internet use on the inequality in psychological well-being between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou holders is mainly reflected in the structure effect, which shows that compared to non-agricultural hukou holders, the return rate of Internet use on the psychological well-being of agricultural hukou holders is lower. Further mechanism analysis shows that using the Internet to socialize, obtain information and understand politics is more beneficial for the psychological well-being of non-agricultural hukou holders; moreover, Internet use can further exert different effects on the psychological well-being of the two groups by differently influencing their job satisfaction, government evaluation, and sleep quality. This study also confirms that relying only on external scientific and technological progress has a limited corrective effect on existing inequalities.

Based on the data of the Chinese General Social Survey 2015 (CGSS2015), this article conducts an empirical analysis on the relationship between education and health status of Chinese residents by using the structural equation model (SEM), the propensity score matching (PSM) method, and generalized ordered logit (Gologit) model. Our study found that education promotes both the subjective and objective health of residents, and the finding holds true after considering the selection bias. In addition to having a direct role, education could promote health through improved mental health, economic status, and healthy behaviors. The finding is consistent with the explanations in existing research of “efficiency-improving effect”, “mental health effect”, and “budget relaxation effect”. Further research on the mechanism of education affecting health through structural equation modeling finds that mental health plays a more important role than healthy behaviors and economic status. In terms of the differences of various groups, education has stronger effect on vulnerable groups with fewer social resources, which shows that education helps reduce health inequality. The conclusion has important policy significance.

The relationship between health and migration has always been an important theme in immigration research. This research develops a new approach to test the healthy migrant hypothesis and the salmon bias hypothesis in China by examining an interaction term combining agricultural hukou and migrant status, non-agricultural employment history, and subsequent area of residence. Based on two Chinese micro-databases, CGSS 2015 and Harmonized CHARLS, we conducted an empirical test on the relationship between migration and health. Our empirical evidence suggests that the initial health advantage among Chinese rural migrant workers was largely due to self-selection rather than migration effects. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, this advantage disappeared. After their health deteriorated, migrant workers returned to their original location. This could exacerbate the contradiction between the allocation of medical resources and the demand in rural and urban China, further intensifying the already widening health status gap between rural and urban residents.