Research On The Impact Of Commercial Health Insurance On Household Consumption Inequalit

Reducing the inequality of household consumption and promoting common prosperity of human society are the essential requirements of socialism with Chinese characteristics.Consumption is an important engine and key link to smooth the domestic systemic circulation.However,in recent years,China’s consumption had continued to be sluggish.To strengthen the role of the domestic systemic circulation in driving the economy,it is necessary to build a complete domestic demand system to comprehensively promote consumption.In the social security system,insurance is an important tool for dispersing risks,which can mitigate the economic impact of uncertainty on the public,reduce preventive savings and increase consumption,thereby reducing the level of consumption inequality.Commercial health insurance plays an important role in the multi-level medical security system.With its rich product types and wide coverage,it can fill the missing part of social security,effectively disperse,and transfer the health risks faced by residents’ families,reduce the uncertainty of future expenditure,improve residents’ consumption ability,and play an important role in tapping residents’ consumption potential and improving the domestic systemic circulation system.Based on the panel data of the China Household Finance Survey(CHFS)in 2017 and2019,this paper analyzed the characteristics of the role of commercial health insurance on consumer inequality.Firstly,based on reviewing existing literature,starting from traditional consumption theory,preventive savings theory,and health demand theory,this study qualitatively analyzed the impact mechanism of commercial health insurance on consumption inequality,and proposed research hypotheses for this article.Secondly,selected "whether to purchase commercial health insurance" and the Kakwani index to measure the degree of consumption inequality,and used this to represent the participation status and degree of consumption inequality of household commercial health insurance.Then,used a two-way fixed effects model to empirically test the impact of commercial health insurance on consumption inequality.On this basis,household income,health risk,and preventive savings were introduced as intermediary variables,and their impact mechanisms were tested by constructing an intermediary utility model.Thirdly,in order to test the robustness of the basic regression results and solve the endogeneity problem that may exist in the regression model,the "provincial commercial health insurance participation rate" was selected as the instrumental variable,and the panel fixed effect model was used for estimation.The basic regression model was replaced with the quantile regression model,and the database was replaced with the 2018 China Family Tracking Survey(CFPS)data,to re-examine the relationship between commercial health insurance and consumer inequality.Finally,a comparative analysis was conducted on the heterogeneity of the impact of commercial health insurance on consumption inequality from four aspects: consumption type,urban-rural,regional,and gender.The research results showed that,firstly,after controlling for influencing factors at the individual,family,and community levels,commercial health insurance still has a significant negative impact on consumption inequality,that is,participating in commercial health insurance can reduce the degree of household consumption inequality;Secondly,commercial health insurance has a clear transmission mechanism for consumer inequality.By changing household income,reducing household health risks,and preventive savings,commercial health insurance reduces consumer inequality among households;Finally,the impact of commercial health insurance on household consumption inequality is heterogeneous,and this inhibitory effect is more obvious for the Survivability consumption of households headed by women living in urban areas,second tier cities and households headed by women.Finally,the following policy recommendations are proposed: firstly,to increase the coverage of commercial health insurance to stimulate residents’ consumption enthusiasm and establish a long-term mechanism for the synchronous development of commercial health insurance and consumption;Secondly,establish a differentiated guarantee system to give more attention and policy preferences to economically underdeveloped areas;Thirdly,the government and insurance companies should work together to increase the promotion of commercial health insurance and enhance residents’ insurance literacy.