The Impact Of The Minimum Wage Standard On The Participation Of Migrant Workers In Urban Medical Insurance

As we all know,health is important for everyone.The people’s well-being is an important symbol of the country’s prosperity and strength,and is also the common pursuit of all the people.Farmers work for a special and large labor group in China,and their health is also worthy of our attention.As of December 2021,the total number of migrant workers in China has reached 292.51 million,of which 58.71% live and work in cities,most of them are engaged in high-risk,high-intensity industries,making their actual demand for medical services relatively higher.However,due to the restrictions of the household registration system and the high medical insurance contribution rate,most migrant workers who migrate to the cities to work are not covered by the urban workers’ medical insurance system.In addition,the cross-regional transfer process of urban workers’ medical insurance is also cumbersome,resulting in many migrant workers choosing to withdraw their personal savings at one time when moving across regions,and giving up participating in urban workers’ medical insurance.At the same time,the minimum wage standard,which was widely implemented nationwide at the beginning of this century,guaranteed the income of migrant workers.So,does this guarantee mechanism also have a protective effect on the health of migrant workers?Will it increase the likelihood of migrant workers participating in medical insurance for urban workers with a higher level of protection?Based on the above problems,the paper proposes that the increase in the minimum wage standard may reduce the enthusiasm of migrant workers to participate in the basic medical insurance for urban employees,resulting in a decrease in the participation rate.There are two reasons for this: first,the increase in the minimum wage standard has led to an increase in the labor cost of enterprises,and in order to alleviate the cost impact caused by the increase in the minimum wage standard,enterprises choose to avoid paying the basic medical insurance for urban employees,resulting in the loss of migrant workers’ welfare;Secondly,with the rise of the minimum wage standard,the contribution base of urban medical insurance for migrant workers has also increased,resulting in a decline in the willingness of migrant workers to pay urban medical insurance,and eventually reducing the enrollment rate.In order to meet the scientific viewpoint,this paper constructs a panel logit model,uses the 2016 and 2018 national health and family planning dynamic monitoring survey(CMDS)database of migrant population,matches the minimum wage standards of prefecture-level cities,and demonstrates the impact of minimum wage standards on migrant workers’ participation in urban workers’ medical insurance.To this end,the following empirical analysis is carried out.Firstly,after controlling the individual characteristic variables including age,gender,marital status,education level,working hours per week,occupation of work,work industry,and type of ownership of the enterprise,and the urban characteristic variables including the logarithm of per capita regional GDP,the logarithm of the average wage of employees,the logarithm of the registered population at the end of the year,and the logarithm of public financial expenditure to GDP,as well as the time and regional fixed effects,the impact of the increase of the minimum wage standard on the enrollment rate of basic medical insurance for migrant workers and urban employees was analyzed.The results show that the increase of the minimum wage standard reduces the probability of migrant workers participating in urban workers’ medical insurance,and is significant at the significance level of 1%.In addition,this paper also considers the impact of whether or not to participate in urban and rural residents’ medical insurance on the relationship between the minimum wage standard and the probability of migrant workers participating in urban employees’ basic medical insurance.The results of the study show that if migrant workers have already participated in the medical insurance of urban and rural residents,the reduction in their participation rate will increase as the minimum wage standard increases.Secondly,on the basis of benchmark regression,this paper conducts robustness tests by replacing the calculation method of core explanatory variables,excluding the samples of migrant workers who have been out for less than 6 months,deleting samples of four municipalities with special administrative status,and considering missing variables,and the test results are basically consistent with the previous paper.Furthermore,in order to further analyze the differences in the participation rate of migrant workers with different characteristics from the increase of minimum wage standards,this paper conducts regression analysis on the sub-samples of migrant workers with different education levels,different economic regions,different work industries and different types of enterprise ownership.According to the regression results,it is found that: First,the increase in the minimum wage has a significant negative impact on the probability of migrant workers below high school participating in urban workers’ medical insurance.Migrant workers with low education levels have lower vocational skills and income levels,and individuals are more significantly affected by the increase in the minimum wage.Second,the impact of the minimum wage level on the participation rate of migrant workers in different regions is also significantly different.The economic level of the eastern region is higher than that of other regions,and the adjustment range and frequency of its minimum wage standards are higher than those in other regions,which leads to the fact that migrant workers in the eastern region are less sensitive to the adjustment of the minimum wage standards,resulting in the participation rate of migrant workers in the eastern region being less affected by the minimum wage than in the western region.Third,compared with the secondary and tertiary industries,the minimum wage has the greatest impact on the probability of migrant workers in the primary industry participating in urban workers’ medical insurance.The income level of migrant workers in agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery is low,the profits of enterprises are also low,and the higher contribution rate makes enterprises and migrant workers conspire to avoid paying basic medical insurance for urban employees.Fourth,under the circumstance that China’s enterprise social security system is not perfect,the participation rate of migrant workers in private enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households has a significant negative correlation with the minimum wage.Based on the above empirical analysis,this paper argues that there is a significant negative correlation between China’s minimum wage standard and the probability of migrant workers participating in urban workers’ medical insurance.In order to increase the participation rate of migrant workers,this article argues that the social insurance system can be further improved from the following three points: improve the medical security system for migrant workers;Strengthen market supervision and implement the responsibility of enterprises to pay social security contributions;Establish an incentive mechanism for individual social security contributions.