Analysis On The Influence Of Socioeconomic Status On The Health Of Middle-Aged And Elderly In China

Since the Reform and Opening Up,China's GDP has grown rapidly and has become the world's second largest economy.With the rapid development of the economy,as well as the improvement of living standards,diet,nutritional status and medical technology,the Chinese life expectancy have risen from 70 in 1990 to 78 years old now.With the implementation of Family Planning Policy and the increasing cost of parenting,China's birth rate has dropped to 12.08‰.Although it has been fully liberalized second child,but forced by economic pressure,many families will not consider to have a second child.China is one of the fastest growing countries in the world,and the proportion of people over 65 years of age will rise from 7%(2000)to 14%(2026)with only 26 years.With the decline in fertility and the increase of life expectancy,China's population dependency ratio is predicted to reduce from 5.01 in 2010 to 1.25 in 2050.Different from the western developed countries,China is not wealthy enough to step into the aging society.Thus the acceleration of aging will have a huge pressure on individuals,families,society.China is facing the enormous challenges about how to deal with the aging crisis and how to support the elderly.This paper first introduces the current situation of China's aging crisis,from our country's national conditions and the distribution of the elderly population in detail.And then introduces the definition and measurement of elderly health in health economics.Besides,this paper gives the literature of the definition of socioeconomic status and the relationship between socioeconomic status and health of the elderly.Based on the Grossman model,this paper studies the health status of middle-aged and elderly people in China by using the cross-sectional data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)2013.The article uses the principal component analysis method(PCA),using five variables to generate a comprehensive index of socioeconomic status,to evaluate the overall effect of socioeconomic status on the health of the elderly in China.Because socioeconomic status is an endogenous variable,simple OLS regression can not rule out the impact of health on socioeconomic status.In order to solve the endogenous problem,party members and the type of residence are used as instrumental variables of socioeconomic status.Regression results show that the higher the socioeconomic status of the elderly,the better self-evaluation of health,mobility,mental health do they have.There was no significant effect between the number of chronic diseases and the socioeconomic status.This article also distinguishes between male and female,middle-aged and older people to study theimpact of socioeconomic status on the health of each group.The study found that the higher the socioeconomic status of the elderly in the cities,the worse their mental health are.Whether in rural areas or in cities,middle-aged people's mobility are worse than the elderly,women's are worse than men's.For self-assessed health status,men are better than women,the elderly in cities are better than the elderly in rural areas.