Research On The Influence Of Family Aging Level On Commercial Health Insurance Consumption

Since the 1970s,China has been implementing the family planning policy for more than 40 years,and the population growth has slowed down significantly.As the decline of birth rate and the extension of life expectancy,China has been generally considered as stepping into an aging society since 2000.The degree of population aging is deepening,which reflected in the age structure of family population tends to be aging at the micro level.According to the 2015 Chinese family financial questionnaire data statistics,the average level of proportion of the elder over 60 years old in a family has reached 26.2%.The problem of family aging is becoming more and more serious,and the problem of pension and health is still becoming increasingly prominent.Therefore,people urgently need commercial health insurance with higher guarantee of security to make up for the deficiency of basic social health insurance.However,the aging level will not only promote the consumption of commercial health insurance,but also reduce it.On one hand,the probability of illness will increase with age,and the deepening of family aging will improve the health risk awareness of family members.When people think that the probability of health risk events increases to a certain degree,they will choose to buy commercial health insurance.On the other hand,China’s aging process and economic development level is obvious mismatch,Which will lead to insufficient effective demand for commercial health insurance.And the increase of the proportion of the elder has greatly increased the family’s expenditure on various pension cost,which makes many families may not have more spare money to buy commercial health insurance,therefore,family ageing levels could reduce the family consumption of commercial health insurance.Finally,the existence of adverse selection will also make insurers keep low enthusiasm for the supplement of insurance products for the elder.,which will have a negative impact on the consumption of commercial health insurance.Based on the above theoretical analysis,this paper starts with the micro-data of China’s household financial survey in 2015,using Probit model and Tobit model to prove the impact of aging on household commercial health insurance consumption.In Probit model,this article chooses whether the family bought commercial health insurance or not as the interpreted variable.In Tobit model,it chooses the family health insurance premium expenditure as the interpreted variable and processes it logarithmically.The explanatory variables are the proportion of the elder,the children and the working population in the family.At the same time,the variables are controlled from the subjective attitude of the respondents,the family characteristics of the respondents,the individual characteristics of the respondents,social security and regional factors.Empirical results show that the impact of family aging on commercial health insurance consumption presents a significant U-shaped.On the left of the inflection point,household consumption of commercial health insurance will increase with the increase of household aging level.But when families are aging to a certain extent,their consumption of commercial health insurance will decrease.The proportion of children in the family will stimulate the consumption of family commercial health insurance,while the increase of the proportion of working people in the family will reduce the consumption of family commercial health insurance.Finally,based on the original model,we added the cross term of household elderly population proportion,rural and urban dummy variables,and the cross term of the square term of the proportion of the elderly in the family,rural and urban dummy variables for regression.It is found that there is no significant regional difference in the influence of family aging level on whether families purchase commercial health insurance.However,the impact of family aging level on family commercial health insurance premium expenditure is different in rural areas and urban areas.The inverse U-shaped relationship between household aging and commercial health insurance premium expenditure is stronger in urban areas.Based on above,this article provides countermeasures and suggestions from the government,insurance companies and individuals.Firstly,the government should improve the tax preferential policy of health insurance and improve the effective demand of health insurance.Secondly,insurance companies should strengthen information access channels and optimize product structuring designs.Finally,individual residents should also strengthen knowledge and enhance insurance awareness.