Research on the Impact of Health Fiscal Expenditure on Relative Poverty in Rural China

Abstract

Health fiscal expenditure plays an important role in adjusting the price of medical services and reducing the medical burden of residents. If we only expand the overall scale of health fiscal expenditure and ignore the structural problems of health fiscal expenditure, it will increase the medical burden of rural residents and make them face the risk of falling into relative poverty. Based on the China General Social Survey data in 2015, 2018 and 2021, this paper uses the Probit model and the IVProbit model to test the impact of health fiscal expenditure on relative poverty in rural China. The study found that: first, with the expansion of health fiscal expenditure, the probability of rural residents falling into relative poverty increases; second, with the expansion of health fiscal expenditure, rural residents with poor health are more likely to fall into relative poverty than rural residents with good health; third, with the expansion of health fiscal expenditure, rural residents in the central and eastern regions are more likely to fall into relative poverty than rural residents in the western region. This paper suggests optimizing the structure of health fiscal expenditures, increasing the proportion of preventive expenditures, deepening the reform of public hospitals, and avoiding excessive expansion of public hospitals.