The Temporal and Spatial Changes of Health Inequality in Rural China.

Jinqi Jiang,Yunru Liu,Wanzhen Huang,Zhenhua Wang

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.821384

Abstract

This article estimates the temporal and spatial changes of health inequality in rural China from 2010 to 2018. Based on a panel database of 29,616 rural residents, the Health Utility Index (HUI) and a spatial econometric model are used for analysis. The results show that, on the temporal dimension, the health inequality of rural China first expands and then deflates. On the spatial dimension, the health inequality gradually deflates from eastern to western China. Furthermore, from 2010 to 2018, the high and low-value areas constantly changed among different provinces. After decomposing the causes of health inequality, it is found that behind the health inequality is the difference of socioeconomic-related status. Moreover, narrowing the difference in socioeconomic-related status is the key to improving health inequality.

Highlights

The WHO proposes that the scope of health covers medical and health and the fairness related to social-economic development [5]
By using the interval regression based on the Chinese threshold to construct the Health Utility Index (HUI) and measure the Centralized Index (CI), this paper finds that the CI values of HUI from 2010to 2018 are 0.0155, 0.0436, 0.0552, 0.0381, and 0.0234, which means there is pro-rich health inequality in rural China
This paper explores the temporal and spatial changes of health inequality in rural China

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Since China’s so-called “reform and opening up” policy was implemented, China’s economy has grown rapidly. In order to have a more distinct view of the changes of health inequality of rural residents in China, this section provides a time trend of the CI of economic-related status variables between 2010 and 2018. As it is shown, there are wide disparities in the health status of different social groups. We conduct a global Moran’s Index to test the spatial autocorrelation among different regions As it is shown, the global Moran’s Index values of the health inequality of Chinese rural residents during 2010 and 2018 are 0.206, 0.285, 0.268, −0.048, and 0.440. The other one is that economic exchanges between neighboring provinces are more convenient, which promotes the flow of health resources and forms spatial correlation

DISCUSSION

Findings

CONCLUSIONS

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT