A Study On The Impact Of Social Capital On The Medical Service Utilization For The Middle-aged And The Elderly

At present,"Healthy China" has become a national strategy.As one of the important means to realize health status,medical service plays a more and more important role.How to effectively use the existing medical and health resources to meet the growing health demand of 1.4 billion people is a key problem that must be urgently solved during the development of China.What’s more,the aging and the change of the age structure of the population have a huge impact on the development of China’s society and family,especially in the fields of pension and medical care,which specifically shows that the elderly and the quasi-elderly who are about to enter the old age stage have higher demand for medical services.The research on the utilization of medical services for this part of the population has become a hot topic in the academic circle.At present,China’s pension and medical security system is not very sound,and it is not easy to rely on the formal system to protect the medical service utilization of the elderly.It is of great practical significance to explore the impact of informal system on the health service utilization.As an important informal system,"social capital" has attracted the attention of the academic community.With the deepening of research,some scholars have linked it with residents’ health service utilization to explore the mechanism of its effectiveness.In order to explore the impact of social capital on the utilization of medical services for the middle-aged and elderly,this study first established a theoretical model with structural social capital and cognitive social capital as independent variables,and the utilization of medical services for the middle-aged and elderly as dependent variables,and carried out variable control according to Grossman’s Model.Secondly,using China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)conducted by NSD of Peking University,this paper studies the impact of social capital on the utilization of medical services by four part model method.Finally,considering the heterogeneity of the middle-aged and elderly groups,the impact of social capital on the utilization of medical services was investigated in urban and rural areas and age groups.The results of empirical analysis show that social capital has a positive impact on the utilization of medical services for the elderly.Specifically,the utilization of outpatient service is positively related to its structural and cognitive social capital,and the utilization of inpatient service is positively related to its cognitive social capital.Cognitive social capital has a positive impact on both outpatient medical expenses and inpatient medical expenses.The results of group regression show that there are urban-rural and age differences in the impact of social capital on the use of medical services.Finally,based on the empirical analysis,this paper puts forward some suggestions to promote the social capital of the middle-aged and the elderly to promote the utilization of medical services,including vigorously promoting community construction,actively encouraging the participation of the elderly in social activities;promoting the construction of good family style,remodeling mutual trust and mutual assistance between relatives and friends;implementing differentiated social capital cultivation policies according to local conditions and people’s conditions.