The Effect of Big Data-Based Digital Payments on Household Healthcare Expenditure

Abstract

Whether families using big data-based digital payments will increase household healthcare expenditure is a subject that needs to be investigated in the era of big data. Based on the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), 24,126 samples from 2014 to 2018 are used to examine the impact and mechanism of big data-based digital payments on household healthcare expenditure. The empirical results of this paper show that the use of digital payments by households can significantly increase household healthcare expenditure with the empowerment of big data. This research employs the instrumental variable method to verify and produce consistent estimation results in order to address potential endogeneity issues such as measurement error and missing variables. We learn via mechanism analysis that household adoption of big data-driven digital payments can remove credit limitations and build social capital, resulting in higher household health-care spending. We also perform a heterogeneity analysis. The findings reveal that when a family's traditional financial accessibility is high, the head of the household is young or middle-aged, and the head of the household has a higher level of education, digital payment will play a larger role in encouraging household healthcare expenditure. The conclusions of this paper are still solid after changing the indicators of household healthcare expenditure substituting the indicators of digital payment, and adjusting the variables. As a result, this article provides micro-evidence for the usage of digital payments by households to enhance healthcare spending.JEL ClassificationD12 G21 O30 O53 I12

Underdog entrepreneurship in the digital era: The effect of digital servitization on household entrepreneurship in China

“…In terms of coverage breadth, the service scope of traditional finance is constrained by business outlets and limited by geographical location. On the other hand, the digital financial service breaks traditional finance's physical constraints in business outlets by leveraging the characteristics of digital technology to improve the financial accessibility of households with the advantage of broad coverage, which ultimately alleviates the credit constraint of entrepreneurship [ 34 ]. In terms of service targets, digital servitization can cover more long-tail customers.…”

Digital village construction, human capital and the development of the rural older adult care service industry

“…While promoting high-tech agriculture aids infrastructure development and Estimation results when HUM3 is a double threshold variable. heightens economic productivity, additional research and practical investigations are indispensable to ascertain these technologies' genuine impact on the older adults (12). Consequently, forthcoming research needs to acknowledge and address these obstacles to fully tap into the potential of digital village construction for the rural older adult care service industry.…”

“…Notably, the degree of human capital plays a significant role in digital empowerment, thanks to the threshold effect associated with the use of digital technologies (11). For instance, a higher educational attainment by the head of the household is linked to a greater propensity to use digital payments for healthcare expenditures, leading to improved healthcare efficiency (12,13). Moreover, enhancing the quality of human capital bolsters the digitalization impact on ameliorating income inequality (14,15).…”

Medical insurance, health risks, and household financial asset allocation: evidence from China household finance survey

“…Medical expenditure : Healthcare expenditure has become the third-largest household expense, following housing and education expenditures. This trend has attracted the interest of many scholars for research ( 52 ). Medical expenditure is something that increases the financial burden of households and increases their financial vulnerability, so households with higher medical expenditure are likely to be more risk-averse, regardless of other factors.…”