Social Pension Scheme and Health Inequality: Evidence From China's New Rural Social Pension Scheme.

Hui Yuan,Lingyun Zheng,Shuoqi Chen,Guochen Pan

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.837431

Hui Yuan, Lingyun Zheng + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.837431

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Abstract

Health equality is an essential component of social justice, and the social policies should be as conducive to promoting health equality as possible. Based on the data from China, this article uses the regression discontinuity design method and the technique of decomposition of concentration index to examine whether the social pension schemes can significantly reduce health inequality among the residents, and tries to compute the contribution rate of pension benefit in alleviating the health inequality. Our results show that the pension benefit can improve the health level of the rural subscribers, especially for the low-income population. Implement of New Rural Pension Scheme contributes to reducing the health inequality among the rural elderly with contribution rate of 39.32%. Our results contain important policy implications.

Highlights

Health is a fundamental human right, and the issue of health equality has attracted significant attention and extensive discussion worldwide [1, 2]
Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design Employing traditional OLS model in this research may be encountered with the following concerns: first, self-rated health scores and rated-by-others health scores are reported by the interviewees and interviewers, respectively, so measurement errors are inevitable; second, it is impossible to fully consider all the factors which affect the health and health inequality of the elderly, so omitted variable bias may exist; third, enrollment in New Rural Social Pension (NRSP) is based on the principle of voluntary participation, rural residents with good health or high income are more inclined to be enrolled, while those with poor health or low income may be unwilling or unable to participate in the scheme, which will lead to sample selection bias
Employing the data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this article uses the regression discontinuity design method (RDD) and the concentration index (CI) decomposition technique to empirically study the impact of the NRSP on the health inequality of the elderly in China rural areas

Summary

Introduction

Health is a fundamental human right, and the issue of health equality has attracted significant attention and extensive discussion worldwide [1, 2]. Promoting health equality is an issue which widely attracts policymakers and scholars’ attention. China has experienced rapid progress in many fields in the past several decades, but sometimes the development was unbalanced and the inequality among residents was even enlarged during this process. Health inequality is one of such instances [4]. In the Outline of the Healthy China 2030 Plan, the Chinese government proposed to promote the equity of basic public services of health maintenance, and gradually narrow the gap of health status among the residents nationwide

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