| China is in a critical period of consumer upgrading under the new double-cycle pattern,and as the country enters a phase of rapid population ageing,older people are increasingly becoming an important consumer group with their greater accumulation of wealth.With China’s economy currently in a downturn,consumption levels are clearly inadequate.Insurance,as a risk diversification tool,can alleviate the uncertainty of residents’ future,and commercial medical insurance,as a complementary means to China’s basic medical insurance system,has a broader coverage,which can prompt residents to reduce their precautionary savings and stimulate their consumption.The insurance industry has continued to grow at a rapid pace in recent years,especially during the new epidemic,and people are increasingly concerned about their health status and the risk of future uncertainty.Therefore,it is important to study the role of commercial health insurance in enhancing the scale and quality of consumption of middle-aged and elderly residents.This paper explores the impact of commercial medical insurance on the consumption upgrading of the middle-aged and elderly groups from a micro level,based on data from the China Health and Pension Tracking Survey.The main findings are as follows: commercial medical insurance promotes the upgrading of consumption levels and the optimisation of consumption structures of the middle-aged and elderly groups.The conclusions still hold after robustness tests.In addition,to address the endogeneity problem in this paper,the PSM method and the treatment effect model are used to address the problem,and the results obtained remain robust.The paper further finds,through mediating effects,that commercial health insurance can on the one hand promote consumption upgrading among the middle-aged and elderly by reducing their medical burden and increasing their relative income.On the other hand,commercial health insurance is a strong guarantee for improving the health expectancy and life expectancy of middle-aged and elderly residents,and as their health expectancy gradually improves,their willingness to save preventively decreases,thus contributing to consumption upgrading.Once again,the study found that the promotion effect of commercial medical insurance on consumption upgrading is significantly heterogeneous: at the regional level,commercial medical insurance has a positive impact on the consumption level of the middle and old age groups in both the east and west regions,but the marginal effect on the optimisation of the consumption structure of residents in the less developed regions of the central and west regions is stronger,suggesting that the promotion of commercial insurance in the central and west regions should be increased to stimulate consumption;at the age level In terms of age,commercial medical insurance has a significant positive impact on the consumption level of both middle-aged and elderly residents,and the marginal effect on the optimisation of the consumption structure of the elderly group is stronger,and the elderly group is more likely to benefit from it;in terms of health,commercial medical insurance has a significant positive impact on the consumption level of both residents with and without chronic diseases,but only promotes the optimisation of the consumption structure of the middle-aged and elderly group without chronic diseases.In terms of health,commercial health insurance has a significant positive impact on the consumption level of residents with and without chronic diseases,but only on the consumption structure of the middle-aged and elderly without chronic diseases.Finally,we argue that vigorously developing commercial health insurance not only improves the multi-level medical insurance system and supplements basic medical insurance,but also has a strong effect on macro policies such as the smooth domestic circulation and the overall promotion of consumption in China,providing ideas to promote the development of the silver hair market and improve the ageing problem. |
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