| Since1999, the percentage of people above60years old has exceeded one tenth of total population in China. According to the regulations of UN, China has become an aging society. Based on the prediction of the research group of National Strategy Study facing to Aging Population, China would have an aged population of202million in2013, accounting for14.8%of the total population. The report China’s Rural Elderly Population and Their Security System:Challenges and Prospects from World Bank points out that the aging problem in the rural area is severer than that in the urban area, and the difference keeps extending. Plenty of data and researches indicate that China has begun to face a growing aging population, which brings great pressure on the society and erodes our population dividend. The aging problem has inevitably become a critical issue in the sustainable development of economy and society. Moreover, the greater aging trend, the income gap due to the long-term urban-rural dual structure, lack of facilities for the elder, and deficiency of the pension system all require an effective solution to the supporting problem for the aged.The aging problem has been the focus of study in China in recent years, and many papers have been emphasized on this issue. From the previous literature, we can find both suggestions proposed from the view of macroscopic policy and analyses on the effects of some specific policy with the use of micro data. In regard to region, some researches focus on the urban or the rural area; some discuss this question bythe comparison of developed area with the underdeveloped area; other studies are done from the general aspect rather than make comparisons. However,relativelyfew papers examine the supporting problem from the angle of combining residential pattern and source of income and then investigate the influence of this two-dimensionpension model on the health condition and well being of elderly people. This paper attempts to answer this problem and exploressuggestions and resolutions to solve the supporting problem in the rural area.This research is theoretically based on Grossman Health Capital Requirements Model and its extended model. Considering that many elderly people, especially elderly people in the countryside, are not economically independent, Hong Liu et al. revised the pension model based on residential pattern and included source of income into pension model, thus building a two-dimension pension model. This is main theoretical model for the empirical analysis in this study. Since the ordinal characteristics are used to measure the dependent variables, the approach of ordered probit estimation is adopted to conduct regression on the econometric model.Data is obtained from CLHLS in2005and2008, obtaining the information of source of income, residential pattern, medical condition, health behavior and health condition surveyedin2005and the information of subjective health condition, objective health condition and well beingsurveyed in2008. This dataallows to observe aged population in the rural area who changed their residential pattern in between and responded to both surveys, in order to detect the effect of all variables on the health and well being of elderly people in the countryside.This piece of work concentrates on the thesis of rural supporting problem in the context of the aging population. Empirical analysis makes the key point of this paper, and the structure is arranged as follows. Section1displays descriptive statistics of the main variables in the sample and reveals the distribution of the two-dimension pension model in the rural area. Section2elaborates the bidimensionality of the rural pension model. Section3demonstrates how the two-dimension pension model affects the health condition and well being of the old differently in terms of gender and age. Other factors contributing to the health condition and well being of the old in the country are investigated in Section4.The conclusion and the policy proposal come as the last part of this work. From the conclusion we can find that the bidimensionality is significant in the rural pension model, and that the two-dimension pension model influences the health condition of the old differently in terms of gender and age. In addition, level of education, medical condition, initial health status and family income all make a difference to the health condition of the aged in the rural area. |
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