Analysis Of The Influence And Mechanism On The Health Status Of The Rural Parents Following Their Children To The City

In the process of Chinese urbanization,due to the incompleteness of rural population migration,the aging degree of the rural population has significantly exceeded that of urban areas,and the migration of rural youth to urban areas is still aggravating the aging of rural population.In the near future,China,especially its rural areas,will face unprecedented pressure to provide for the elderly.However,under the urban-rural dual structure,the predominantly rural men population migration urbanization leads to rural present generation separation phenomenon,which break the family pension model of "enjoying grandchildren and enjoying life" that has been passed down for thousands of years in China and prevent rural parents from supporting their children’s career development and taking care of their grandchildren.Therefore,a large number of rural parents move to cities to support their children’s career development,take care of grandchildren and enjoy their old life.What is the impact on the health of rural parents who follow their children to cities?This paper investigates the effect of the entry of the Chinese rural parents into the city on their health status so as to answer the question of whether moving to the city makes life better for rural parents,and analyzes the theoretical mechanism of it from the perspective of intergenerational relationship and social capital.This paper establishes a difference-in-differences(DID)model,which takes health status as the explanatory variable,uses whether or not to enter the city as the explanatory variable and includes some control variables.This article uses the data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study Database(CHARLS).Since there is little difference between the questionnaires of 2015 and 2018,they are suitable for constructing panel data and conducive to reducing estimation bias.Therefore,they are selected for empirical analysis.After matching the sample ID and deleting the samples with an age of less than 45 and a large number of missing values,12814 samples are finally obtained.In order to evaluate the health status of the accompanying parents as objectively as possible,this paper selects objective indicators to measure the health status,such as chronic disease,pain,depression scale scores and other indicators.Although the data of such indicators come from the statements and answers of the respondents,the evaluation standard is objective rather than determined by the respondents.So they have relatively good objectivity.Among these indicators,physical health indicators are calculated using two secondary indicators: chronic disease and physical pain,and the mental health index are calculated by two secondary indexes: depression scale score and mental state score.The weight of each secondary index is calculated by the entropy weight method.In addition,the type of resident address of respondents was selected as an explanatory variable.Specifically,"whether you live in the urban center and urban and rural areas or the combination of township and town" are taken as explanatory variables.If it is 1,otherwise it is 0.This results in a dummy variable that vary from person to person.The estimated coefficient of this dummy variable is the effect of rural middle-aged and elderly people following their children to the city on their health.The results of empirical analysis show that the rural-urban migration of rural parents significantly improve their physical and mental health conditions.Since there may be essential differences between middle-aged and elderly parents who move to cities with their children and those who do not,self-selection of regression samples may exist.So,the method of propensity score matching method(PSM)is used to select the control group.After the sample processing,the estimated results did not change significantly.However,A small part of the sample in the treatment group may not be rural parents who follow their children to cities,but rural parents who work in cities.Therefore,at least one increased sample of "average number of visits by children" and "time spent taking care of grandchildren" from the original treatment group is taken as the "new treatment group".Respondents in the "new processing group" go to cities mainly to reunite with their children and care for grandchildren,rather than to work.The regression results of the processed new samples show that following children to urban areas significantly improved the health status of rural parents,and the baseline regression may have underestimated this effect.After changing the explained variables and tail reduction,the estimation results remain robust.In addition,the results of heterogeneity analysis in this paper show that there are differences of age and education level in the health improvement effect.Furthermore,the paper uses structural equation model to test that the changes of intergenerational relation and social capital are the channels through which the rural-urban migration of rural parents may affect their health status.The results show that the migration increases the intergenerational relation so as to improve their physical and mental health,and that the migration reduces social capital so as to damage their mental health.