An Empirical Study On Health Disparities And Influencing Factors Of Middle Aged And Elderly Residents Between Urban And Rural

Health is an important component of human capital.After the middle-aged,people's body function began to decline,so they become susceptible to a variety of diseases.The health of the middle aged and elderly people is seriously threatened.In addition,uneven development between Chinese urban and rural areas not only threatens social stability,but also leads to differences of the residents' health in our country.In short,the health problems of middle-aged and elderly people are worthy of attention at the moment which the aging problem is getting worse.And Chinese middle-aged and elderly residents' health disparities that between urban and rural are worthwhile to explore because of the imbalanced development between urban and rural areas.This paper chooses 45 years old and above adults as the object of study,using the data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey in 2013,choosing three different health indicators which are number of chronic diseases,instrumental activity of daily scale(IADL)and self-rated health(SRH)as the measure of health.Then it uses Ordered Logit model and Logistic model to carry out empirical analysis of the middle-aged and elderly residents' physical health status in China.This empirical analysis explores the factors that affect the health status of middle-aged and elderly residents.And through separately processing the urban and rural samples,the paper further studies the middle-aged and elderly residents' health disparities that between urban and rural in China,and observes the different effects of influencing factors on the health status between urban and rural samples.By analyzing the results of empirical study on the influencing factors of middle-aged and elderly residents' health status in China,this paper draw the following conclusions:(1)The middle-aged and elderly residents' health status in our country does exist in rural-urban differences,and the urban middle-aged and elderly residents'IADL situation and SRH is better than the rural middle-aged and elderly residents'.(2)Personal characteristics have different effects on middle-aged and elderly residents'health status in different health indicators.For age,the older the middle-aged and elderly residents,the healthier it may.Age factor have different effects on the three health indicators.For gender,women's health needs attention.The urban middle-aged and elderly women are more likely to suffer from a variety of chronic diseases than men.The rural middle-aged and elderly women are more likely to be impaired of IADL than men.For marriage,there is a protective effect on IADL in marriage.For education,the education is beneficial to the situation of chronic diseases and IADL among the middle-aged and elderly residents,but as for the situation of SRH,the middle-aged and elderly residents with a certain degree of education is more negative than the illiteracy.In addition,education has a greater impact on the rural middle-aged and elderly residents' IADL.(3)Socio-economic status(SES)and childhood health are positively correlated with middle-aged and elderly residents' health status.In SES,the middle-aged and elderly residents who live eastern economy developed region and have high personal income are in better situation of chronic diseases,IADL and SRH.The health status before the age of 15(including 15 years old)is positively correlated with the chronic diseases and SRH of middle-aged and elderly residents,and it has a greater impact on rural middle-aged and elderly residents.(4)The basic medical insurance system is conductive to the health of middle-aged and elderly residents.(5)The factor of social support network have a significant impact on middle-aged and elderly residents' health status.For social activities,social activities have a positive impact on IADL and SRH.For number of children,the greater the number of children,the more negative impact on IADL situation of middle-aged and elderly residents.In addition,it is negatively correlated with the chronic diseases of urban middle-aged and elderly residents,and it is negatively correlated with SRH of rural middle-aged and elderly residents.For support of the elderly,the stable support of the elderly is beneficial to the health status among the middle-aged and elderly residents.In general,relying on savings have the greatest impact on middle-aged and elderly residents'health.Followed by relying on children to support of elderly.The pension have the smallest impact on the middle-aged and elderly residents' health.(6)There is a certain effect among health indicators.The chronic disease is one of the major influence factors of IADL,and it has negative impact on IADL.The chronic diseases and the situation of IADL are the main effect factors of SRH,and they have negative impact on SRH.For empirical results,this paper provides several policy suggestions.Firstly,the government should improve Health Care Service System and Social Security System in economic less-developed regions and rural areas as soon as possible.Secondly,the government should take measures to improve the health education level of middle-aged and elderly residents in rural areas.Thirdly,we should pay attention to the health status of women and children.Fourthly,we should make full use of family pension.Fifthly,we should encourage the urban and rural middle-aged and elderly residents to participate in social activities.Finally,the government must aggressively strengthen the prevention and cure of chronic diseases.