Immigrants’ health education and economic behaviours: saving rates, social medical insurance and house purchase

Abstract

Healthy China is a crucial policy for advancing global health, addressing inequality between rural and urban health education, and helping the domestic markets recover after the COVID-19 outbreak. This study combines life cycle mechanisms and safety beliefs to evaluate the long-lasting values of health education. We employed data from the China Migration Dynamic Surveys to examine the economic behaviours of 720,900 immigrants using a robust empirical approach combining an Extended Regression Model (E.R.M.), Average Treatment Effects (A.T.E.), and heterogeneous treatment effects. We find that health education increases participation in social medical insurance and the likelihood of purchasing a house. In contrast, the relationship between health education and saving rates is non-linear effects. Empirically robust heterogeneous treatment effects account for heterogeneity in the previous and the younger generations, as well as urban and rural citizens’ long-run effects of health education. This study’s findings suggest that health education stimulates immigrants’ consumption behaviours; however, extra health education is not desirable. Rural-urban citizenship acquisition bias is found to significantly affect health education.