Do Social Pension Schemes Promote the Mental Health of Rural Middle-Aged and Old Residents? Evidence From China.

Guochen Pan,Kai Zhan,Zhixiang Geng,Shaobin Li

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.710128

Abstract

As China experiences rapid aging, the mental health of older rural adults has become a major public health concern. Among other social insurance programs, the New Rural Social Pension (NRSP) scheme was established to replace part of the income for old-age rural residents in China. This article employs survey data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2015 and 2018 to investigate the impact of a pension on depression in middle-aged and old residents. Our results show that the pension scheme not only reduces the depressive symptoms of the rural residents but keeps down the prevalence rate of depression. Among the subscribers of the pension scheme, the pensioners benefit more from enrolling in the pension scheme than the contributors in terms of depression alleviation. The impact of pension on depression displays heterogeneity; female residents, residents in central China, and/or those from lower income households are found to be positively affected. It is also confirmed that a pension scheme contributes to easing depression via reduced labor supply, better family support, and more consumption expenditure.JEL Classification: H55, I18, I38.

Highlights

Due to improved medical conditions, higher living standards, and a declining birth rate, accelerated aging around the globe seems to be unavoidable
The results in the first column show that the coefficient of pension participation is negative and statistically significant at 1% level, indicating that the subscribers generally have lower Center for Epidemiological Study Depression Scale (CES_D) score and better mental health than the non-subscribers
When we divide the subscribers into contributors and pensioners, the regression results in column 2 show that only the pensioners benefit from the depression relief effect of pension, the coefficient of contributors is negative, but statistically insignificant

Summary

Introduction

Due to improved medical conditions, higher living standards, and a declining birth rate, accelerated aging around the globe seems to be unavoidable. According to the design of the scheme, the pension fund will be contributed to by the subscriber, the employer, and the local and central government. When NRSP was initiated at the local area level, if the rural subscriber was beyond 60, he/she was entitled to receive basic pension benefit from the fund and pension premium was no longer required, on the condition that the qualified children of the subscriber shall be subscribed in the scheme. Local government was required to subsidize the subscriber for no

Methods

Results

Conclusion