The Income Effects Of Health Human Capital On Rural Residents In China

Issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers already have been the key point of the government work, The eighteenth national congress of the communist party report serve this issue as key emphasis in the new period work. Core of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" problem is farmer problem, especially the problem of farmers’ income, the specific performance are the low level and low growth of farmers’ income. Since China’s reform and opening up, China has experienced a miracle of economic development, from a underdeveloped country ranked as the world’s second largest economy after the United States. But had to admit, the macro economic prosperity did not change the status quo of China’s dual economic structure, urban and rural economic development gap still exists, the income level of urban and rural residents still exist difference. Under the background of the urban-rural dual structure, the core of economic structural adjustment is the urban and rural structure adjustment, and how to improve the ability of farmers and their income level become the biggest reform in the urban and rural structure adjustment. So to speak, build Long-term revenue growth mechanism, promote rural economic prosperity, change the urban-rural dual economic characteristics, has become the key of building harmonious socialist society.Under the unified research framework, this paper, adopting literature research, comparison research, normative research and empirical research methods synthetically, analyse the income effects of health human capital on rural residents in China using the panel data from China health and nutrition survey(CHNS) in2000,2004,2006. The purpose of this reserch is to give an answer from the micro perspective on such a essential question, that is, how health human capital influence farmers’ income in China. The result of the reserch provides Chinese evidence for health human capital theory and empirical studies. A research framework of this paper is as follows:Chapter1is about the basic research question, which introduced the research background, significance, goal, content, research methods and literature review including theoretical and empirical research production which formed the basis of this paper; Chapter2discussed the research method to be used,in this chapter, theoretical and empirical model and micro measurement methods are introduced, in addition, also made a general description of research data; Chapter3-5is the main part of the paper, this chapter studied the effect of farmer’s health human capital to their labor participation rate, agricultural income and non-agricultural income respectively; Chapter6is the conclusion part of this paper, mainly expounded the research conclusion of this paper, policy implications and the existing shortcomings.The main research conclusions of this paper are as follows:First of all, the health of farmers have significant impact to their labor participate decision-making and non-agricultural labor participation decision making, but this impact is significant different in different type of production decision-making, such as the height of farmers has a significant positive impact for them to participate in non-agricultural labor; Overweight and obese people have higher probability to participate in non-agricultural labor; With the increase of energy intake, the probability of farmers to participate in non-agricultural labor decreased significantly, the conclusions above are different obviously from the results we gained in the health impact to farmers’labor participate decision-making. In addition, for male and female farmers, the health also have different influence to their labor participation decision-making. Compared with the women, the degree of the influence is bigger among the men in their labor participation decision-making.Secondly, in the family level, the health have a significant effect to peasant household’s income which come from cultivation industry, especially embodied in health condition measured by self-reported health index, according to the estimation, the returns of health, calculated by the simple average method and empowerment average method, were5.8%and9.2%, but in addition to self-reported health indicators, other health indicators did not show significant effect in line with expectations. In the individual level, different health indicators showed consistent influence to farmers’ agricultural income, especially showed in the influence of the height and the calorie intake. Male and female farmers increase1cm height, can increase4.29%and2.54%respectively in agricultural income. With1kcal of energy intake increase, male and female farmers can raise0.01%of their agricultural income. Finally, in the influence of health to farmers’non-agricultural activities income, height, body mass index and disease all have significant impact, but there is a gender difference. In addition, although Caloric intake have no significant effect to farmers’ non-agricultural activities income, and the direction is negative. But through further research,we found that constitute the three main sources of calorie, carbohydrate and fat intake increased significantly reduce the farmers’ non-agricultural income, but higher protein intake can significantly increase the farmers’ non-agricultural income.According to the above research conclusion, this paper proposed targeted countermeasures from two angles:on the one hand, in addition to the traditional material capital and education capital investment, government also should attach importance to farmers’ health human capital investment on China’s rural areas, such as strengthening the rural health service facilities investment, reduces the price the consumer goods and strengthening health propaganda, etc.; on the other hand, Government department should, through the formulation and implementation of policy, reduce the negative effect from short-term and long-term disease, make the farmers walk out of vicious cycle. In particular, strengthen the public health service system in rural areas; continue to improve the rural three-level health service system, increase investment in rural medical to raise farmers’ accessibility and availability of medical services; improve the existing medical security system for rural residents, such as NCMS and RMHC, improve farmers’ ability to against disease risk.