The Impact Of Population Aging On The Demand Of Commercial Health Insurance

At present, the aging of population is one of the results caused by the economic development.The soaringly aging population in developing countries as well as the developed countries which have firstly become aging societies will bring greater challenges to the economic and social development. The percentage of elderly people over 65 in China has been doubled compared with that in 25 years ago due to the extended life expandancy caused by continously improving medical technology and the decline of birth rate caused by family planing policy.China have entered the aging society at the end of 2000. Different from other countries, the aging population in China, is featured with larger scale, faster growth rate, more elderly people and other characteristics. The major problems we are facing is safety and health of elderly people. The 4th survey conducted by the National Health Services shows that the mobidity of elderly population in China within 2 weeks is 46%, higher than the average level of 18.9%. The cost of hospitalization, and medical care of elderly people is rising sharply. At present, In order to meet the demands of different people, China developed three basic social medical insurances: the basic medical insurance of urban and rural areas, a new type of rural cooperative medical insurance, and urban and rural basic medical insurance. The three insurances are the most basic medical insurances, at the end of 2014, the number of China’s urban and rural residents participating in social medical insurance rised to 96%, but it is still difficult and expensive for the insured person to see a doctor. The elderly with sickness will gradually choose commercial health insurance because of the highly medical cost.Thus, for the health insurance market, the aging population is both challenge and opportunity. The sixth national census shows that the population of Liaoning province ranks fourth in China. In 2014, one in five people is an old man. And commercial health insurance is full of regional structural contradictions,the ’development of which is different from one place to another.So this paper focuses,on the causes and influences of comercial insurance in Liaoning Province, not only can directly reflect the actual demand of local health insurance in Liaoning province, but also provide suggestions to the commercial insurance market under the circumstances of aging population.This paper is divided into fifth parts. The first part is the introduction, which describes the background, significance and reference review of the thesis. In the second part, the paper explains the related concepts of the aging population, the commercial health insurance, and the relationship between aging population and the development of health insurance in China. The third part takes Liaoning Province as an example to describe the current situation of the aging population and the demand for commercial health insurance, analyzes and the factors that affect the health insurance demand. The fourth part is the empirical analysis of the impact factors of commercial health insurance demand in the background of China’s aging population. The four virable, the elderly dependency ratio, the average household population, and the average per capita GDP of the economic development are combined to set up a vector auto regression model, and then use impulse response figure to explain the impacts between the three indicators and-per capita health insurance premium in Liaoning province. The fifth part further analyses the fourth part and puts forward some suggestions from the aspect of insurance companies and government, and encourages them to take full advantages of the opportunities brought by the aging population to develop commercial insurance industry greatly.The empirical results show that there is a long-term stable and harmonious relationship between the four variables, ie. the elderly dependency ratio, the per capita GDP, the average household population, and the per capita health insurance premium income. The rise of the elderly dependency ratio can improve the demand of commercial health insurance;the increase of average household population has an inhibitory effect on the demand for health insurance; per capita GDP has a hysteresis effect on the demand for health insurance, the demand for commercial health insurance will rise due to a long-term growth of per capita of GDP. To sum up, we should take reasonable measures to shift the challenges brought about by the aging population to the development opportunities of commercial health insurance.