Socioeconomic Disparities in Health Care Consumption: Using the 2018-China Family Panel Studies

Abstract

The existing research on residents’ health care consumption mostly covers medical care consumption and seldom regards residents’ health care consumption as an independent research object. This article takes residents' healthcare consumption as the research object and aims to explore the impact of socioeconomic status on healthcare consumption and its mechanisms. The data of this study came from the 2018-China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The binary probit regression model and the Tobit model explored the impact mechanism of residents’ income, education, occupation, and physical activity on health care consumption decision-making and health care expenditure, respectively. The research results showed that, from the perspective of the direct influence mechanism, residents’ work income (0.029, p < 0.01) and education level (811.149, p < 0.01) had a significant positive impact on health care consumption. Residents whose occupations (−99.697, p < 0.01) tend to be more skilled and also have higher health care consumption. From the perspective of the mediating mechanism, residents' physical exercise duration had a significant positive impact on their participation in healthcare consumption (0.005, p < 0.01) but had a weaker impact on healthcare consumption expenditure (21.678, p < 0.1). In general, socioeconomic status represented by income, education, and occupation had a significant positive impact on residents’ health care consumption. The duration of physical exercise also played an important mediating role.

The effect and mechanism of Internet use on the physical health of the older people—Empirical analysis based on CFPS

“…In less-developed areas, a shortage of advanced medical service facilities, national fitness venues, and social security measures jeopardizes the effort to improve the physical health of the older people. Therefore, the Chinese government has continuously increased its emphasis on the health of the older people and has issued relevant policies to promote the health care consumption of the older people (4). Simultaneous with the aging process of the population is the rapid development of the Internet industry.…”