Research On Health,Rural Labor Migration And Their Labor Market Performane

In the context of continuing urbanization in China,the contribution of migrant workers to the economic development,and the important role of health human capital,based on human capital theory and Grossman healthy demand theory,this paper reviews related research papers in the field of health economics and labor economics,and then put forward the research framework:Take healthy human capital as the main clue,this paper first studies the effect of health on rural migration decision in China.Then,aimed at people who have migrated from rural to urban,this paper studies the relationship between health and their performance in the urban labor market.After that,follows an empirical analysis of how the current health care insurance system affect migrant workers' use of medical service,from the point of enhancing the healthy capital stock of migrant workers.Contents and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,take self-reported health(SRH),height,body mass index(BMI)and"three-month prevalence rate" as comprehensive,long-term,medium-term and short-term health indicators respectively,by using binary Probit model,this paper analyzes the influence of health on the rural labor migration.Results show that there is healthy self-selection mechanism during the rural labor migration,but different the effect is sensitive to health indicators used;the effect of health also shows differences in gender,age,and income level aspects.Secondly,effects of health on rural-urban migrants'market performance are studied.To avoid endogeneity between health,worktime and income caused by causality,this paper specifies a 3-equation simultaneous model,estimated using seemingly unrelated regression(SUR)method,results show that there is positive interaction between health and income,and causal relationship between health and worktimeof migrant workers.In particular,better health brings higher lincome,while higher income helps to enhance their capacity to invest in health.The relationship between health and worktime of migrant workers shows that most of them work excessive hours,some of their health deteriorates after working in cities,and long-time work has been the major reason.Migrant workers,who are in poorer health status are at greater health risks,namely these people are often engaged in long working hours and low wage works,and in turn,their health become poorer.However,there is limitation on their choice of hours worked under the institution of labor market,so they can only choose to exit the labor market,or have to continue to work.The last core chapter uses "annual medical expenses" and "medical expenses in the last three months" as routine medical service utilization,"the percent of self-paid medical expenses" as medical burden,and "physical examination" as preventive medical service.Using two-part model(TPM),Heckman selection model,and Probit model,the impact of medical insurance system on migrant workers'medical care utilization is studied.Results indicate that not all migrant workers are covered by medical insurance,and among all the medical insurance categories,the new rural cooperative medical insurance(NCMS)accounts for the largest proportion;Participation in medical insurance improves the probability of migrate workers seeking medical treatment after getting ill;NCMS is not effective in improving the use of routine medical service utilization;Medical insurance mainly subsidizes for heavy illness,but only a small portion of people are covered;migrant workers don't use the preventive health care actively,and people usually seek to medical treatment only after being ill.This paper outlined a dynamic picture of health,rural-urban labor migration,migrants' market performance,and their medical care utilization.(1)Before migration,health is one of the important factors during their migration decision making;(2)After migrated,health continues to play an important role in their in urban labor market performance;(3)Limited by their income level,under the current medical care system,migrant workers' demand for medical services has not been fully released.