The Impact Of Population Structure On The Demand For Commercial Health Insurance

With the economic development,China’s population structure has undergone significant changes,mainly manifested in the extension of average life expectancy,the reduction of average household size,the increase of elderly dependency ratio,the improvement of education level and urbanization level.Under the positive adjustment of fertility policy,although the proportion of children in China has rebounded,the overall proportion is still low,with fewer children and the miniaturization of family structure,Aging and other issues are still prominent.It can be seen that the population problem has always been a long-term and overall problem facing China.The level of social medical insurance in China is low,while the treatment cycle of major diseases is long and the treatment cost is high.Once people get sick,they will face great economic pressure.Commercial health insurance can provide people with a higher level of health security and effectively alleviate the pressure faced by the expenditure of basic medical insurance.The government also attaches great importance to its development,has been continuously improving the relevant systems for the development of commercial health insurance,and clearly points out that commercial health insurance should be fully developed to strive for its scale to exceed two trillion yuan in 2025.However,compared with foreign countries,the scale of China’s commercial health insurance market is still small,while changes in population structure such as aging,reduction of household size,improvement of education level and urbanization level will change health risks,thus affecting the cognition and demand for commercial health insurance,Therefore,this thesis explores the impact of population structure on the demand for commercial health insurance from the perspective of population structure.This thesis divides the population structure into natural,social and regional structures.Firstly,it theoretically analyzes the impact of population structure on the demand for commercial health insurance;Secondly,it analyzes the current situation of China’s population structure and commercial health insurance,quantifies each structure with indicators such as child dependency ratio,elderly dependency ratio,proportion of spouses and urbanization rate,quantifies the demand for health insurance with health insurance density,depth and health insurance development index,and adopts the provincial panel data of 31 provinces from 2010 to 2019,System GMM is used for empirical analysis,and difference GMM and substitution variable method are used for robustness test;Thirdly,according to the 10-year per capita GDP ranking of each province,31 provinces are divided into class one,class two and class three regions for heterogeneity analysis;Finally,it puts forward suggestions from the perspectives of insurance companies,the government,regulators and consumers,in order to provide a basis for adjusting population policies and promoting the development of commercial health insurance,and provide some reference significance and value for narrowing the development gap of health insurance among regions.The results show that at the national level,the elderly dependency ratio,average household size,the proportion of spouses,education level and urbanization level in the core explanatory variables have a significant positive impact on the density and depth of commercial health insurance,and the influence of child dependency ratio on the density and depth of health insurance is different.In the control variables,the per capita health care expenditure of urban residents and the increase of per capita medical insurance fund expenditure of urban workers can also promote the demand for commercial health insurance.As far as different regions are concerned,the impact of population structure on the demand for commercial health insurance varies to some extent.The first category of regions are economically developed,and the factors affecting the demand for commercial health insurance are complex and diverse.Population factors are only part of them.Compared with the first category of regions,the population structure has a greater impact on the demand for health insurance in the second and third categories of regions.Therefore,insurance companies should innovate products,use the Internet to optimize business models,meet the diversified needs of different groups,balance regional development and narrow the development differences between regions;The government should actively adjust the population policy,give policy support to commercial health insurance,strengthen the publicity of commercial health insurance,connect basic medical treatment with commercial health insurance,realize data sharing and support the development of commercial health insurance.The regulatory authorities should strictly monitor the risks and do a good job in risk management from the aspects of business entities and insurance products;Consumers should also improve their insurance awareness,insure in good faith and buy on demand.