Health Insurance and Consumption: Evidence from China’s New Cooperative Medical Scheme

Bai, Chong–En; Wu, Binzhen

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1865821

Cited by 40 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Evidence on both URBMI and NCMS shows that the expansion of health insurance in China has led to an increase in health service utilization, an improvement in the health status of the population, and a decrease in medical impoverishment . Some research groups have also reported that NCMS and URBMI contribute to more food consumption, more education investment, a lower saving rate, and more involvement in self‐employed business . These positive results indicate that the expansion of health insurance in China indeed contributes to the improvement of population welfare.…”

Section: China's New Wave Of Health Care Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

China's health care system reform: Progress and prospects

2017

Health Planning & Management

204

176

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This paper discusses the progress and prospects of China's complex health care reform beginning in 2009. The Chinese government's undertaking of systemic reform has achieved laudable achievements, including the expansion of social health insurance, the reform of public hospitals, and the strengthening of primary care. An innovative policy tool in China, policy experimentation under hierarchy, played an important role in facilitating these achievements. However, China still faces gaps and challenges in creating a single payer system, restructuring the public hospitals, and establishing an integrated delivery system. Recently, China issued the 13th 5-year plan for medical reform, setting forth the goals, policy priorities, and strategies for health reform in the following 5 years. Moreover, the Chinese government announced the "Healthy China 2030" blueprint in October 2016, which has the goals of providing universal health security for all citizens by 2030. By examining these policy priorities against the existing gaps and challenges, we conclude that China's health care reform is heading in the right direction. To effectively implement these policies, we recommend that China should take advantage of policy experimentation to mobilize bottom-up initiatives and encourage innovations.

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Section: China's New Wave Of Health Care Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

China's health care system reform: Progress and prospects

2017

Health Planning & Management

204

176

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“…4 A number of recent studies published in Chinese academic journals examined the impact of uncertainty and income shocks on Chinese consumers' consumption in contexts other than retirement, such as the introduction of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme in rural China (e.g. Ma et al2010;Bai et al 2012). households' total nondurable expenditure into these subcategories, these studies found that, while retirement reduces significantly a household's total nondurable expenditure (by about 20%), more than half of this reduction is due to the reductions in work-related expenditure, which helps explain the retirement-consumption puzzle. However, neither study has investigated into the retirement-consumption puzzle from the perspective of food consumption (especially from the perspective of retirees' resource-substitution behavior).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the retirement-consumption puzzle through the lens of food consumption-fuzzy regression-discontinuity evidence from urban China

et al. 2017

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This paper attempts to provide an understanding of the widely-documented retirementconsumption puzzle from the perspective of food consumption. Exploiting urban China's "forced" retirement system, we use the legal retirement age cutoff as an instrumental variable for one's retirement status to estimate the causal impacts of retirement on four major aspects of food consumption for males aged 50-70 in urban China: food expenditure, time spent on food acquisition, the quantity and quality of food consumed. Our fuzzy regression-discontinuity analysis of the China Health and Nutrition Survey data finds that, consistent with the retirement-consumption puzzle, retirement reduces individuals' total food expenditure by 49%. However, retirement barely changes their quantity of food consumed (measure by total calorie intakes). Serving to reconcile the differential retirement impacts on elderly males' food expenditure and consumption, retirees are found to substitute their time for money in food acquisition upon retirement. However, they have to sacrifice some quality for quantity of food consumption while smoothing the latter. Given the criteria provided by the Chinese Nutrition Association, retirement negatively affects retirees' diet balance. They consume significantly less food with animal origins (and thus less fat and protein) and more grains (and thus more carbohydrate) upon retirement.

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“… Reforms that improve confidence or reduce uncertainty regarding future economic conditions: By improving the sustainability of public finances, credible reforms in pensions and healthcare systems can boost consumption today through wealth effects and reduced need for precautionary saving. Empirical studies have, indeed, shown that the risk of unexpected healthcare expenditure is an important motive of precautionary saving, and policies that improve access to medical insurance increase consumption (Gruber and Yelowitz, 1999;Jappelli et al, 2007;Bai and Wu, 2014). However, such reforms may be less effective in reducing precautionary saving if the volatility of income and the risk of unemployment is very high (Mody et al, 2012).…”

Section: Figure 2 Regulation In Professional Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming in a Difficult Macroeconomic Context: A Review of Issues and Recent Literature

Sánchez

Serres

Yashiro

2017

J. Intl Econ. Comm. Policy.

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This paper reviews the main issues related to the short-term impact of structural reforms in different macroeconomic contexts and takes stock of existing theoretical and empirical studies. Taking reforms introduced in “normal” times as a benchmark, it reviews the available evidence on the impact of reforms that are implemented in “bad” times — defined as the presence of a sizeable negative output gap and persistently weak demand — as well as under different assumptions regarding the availability or effectiveness of macroeconomic policies in supporting the reforms. In doing so, the paper focuses on the key channels through which different reforms influence short-term activity via the main components of demand and discusses how these channels operate under different macro conditions.

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Health Insurance and Consumption: Evidence from China’s New Cooperative Medical Scheme

Cited by 40 publications

References 30 publications

China's health care system reform: Progress and prospects

China's health care system reform: Progress and prospects

Understanding the retirement-consumption puzzle through the lens of food consumption-fuzzy regression-discontinuity evidence from urban China

Reforming in a Difficult Macroeconomic Context: A Review of Issues and Recent Literature

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