Health Outcomes and Socio-Economic Status Among the Elderly in China: Evidence from the CHARLS Pilot

Abstract

Health Outcomes and Socio-Economic Status among theElderly in China: Evidence from the CHARLS Pilot * We are concerned in this paper with measuring health outcomes among the elderly in Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, China, and examining the relationships between different dimensions of health status and measures of socio-economic status (SES). We use the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) pilot data to document health conditions among the elderly in Gansu and Zhejiang provinces, where the survey was fielded. We use a very rich set of health indicators that include both self-reported measures and biomarkers. We also examine correlations between these health outcomes and two important indicators of socioeconomic status (SES): education and log of per capita expenditure (log pce), our preferred measure of household resources. While there exists a very large literature that examines the relationships between SES and health measures, little has been done on Chinese data to see whether correlations reported in many other countries are replicated in China, particularly so for the aged. In general education tends to be positively correlated with better health outcomes, as it is in other countries. However, unmeasured community influences turn out to be highly important, much more so than one usually finds in other countries. While it is not yet clear which aspects of communities matter and why they matter, we set up an agenda for future research on this topic. We also find a large degree of under-diagnosis of hypertension, a major health problems that afflicts the aged. This implies that the current health system is not well prepared to address the rapid aging of the Chinese population, at least not in Gansu and Zhejiang.

Evaluation of successful aging among older people in China: Results from China health and retirement longitudinal study

“…The pilot survey of CHARLS was carried out in two provinces in 2008, and returned high-quality data. 20,21 The study was subsequently expanded to the national baseline survey carried out in 2011-2012. Ethics approval for the data collection was obtained from the Biomedical Ethics Review Committee of Peking University (IRB00001052-11015).…”

“…The survey has been described in detail elsewhere. [20][21][22] Of 7102 participants who were aged 60 years or older in the 2011 national baseline survey of CHARLS, 5667 had complete data about successful aging and were used in the present study, with 1435 were excluded because of missing data. The missing data were more likely to be female, older age, other marital status, lowly educated, more likely to live in an agricultural Hukou and reside in western China.…”

Regional Disparities in Self‐reported Health: Evidence From Chinese Older Adults

“…For impatient care, reimbursement rates are low, topping out at 64% in urban Zhejing (Strauss et al, 2012). Third, the availability and quality of health care service, as well as health insurance schemes, vary substantially across communities (Strauss et al, 2011;Strauss et al, 2012), with people in some localities particularly vulnerable to health shocks.…”

“…When both scales are applied in one survey, such as in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe 2004, it is found that the one starting with 'excellent' produces more variance and more symmetric health distributions (Jürges, 2007). A recent study on health outcomes and socioeconomic status among the elderly in China using CHARLS pilot also uses this scale (Strauss et al, 2011).…”

Health Insurance and Health Care among the Mid-Aged and Older Chinese: Evidence from the National Baseline Survey of CHARLS

“…As a result, boundaries between rural-registered and urban-registered population have become increasingly blurred, and occupational mobility is on the rise. In the area of health insurance, great strides have been made to expand coverage to the rural population (Strauss et al, 2012), and benefits have also been converging (Barber and Yao, 2010). But significant gaps in benefits still exist, which poses barriers to eventual unification of health insurance programs.…”