A Study On The Impact Of Financial Health Expenditure On Poverty Vulnerability

The problem of poverty affects regional economic development and social stability,and involves social equity issues such as income distribution;therefore,anti-poverty is an inescapable responsibility of the government.Since China put forward the general policy of poverty eradication,governments at all levels have been implementing poverty reduction policies and providing subsidies through financial support to eventually free all residents from absolute poverty,but eliminating absolute poverty does not completely solve the poverty problem.We need to take a more long-term and comprehensive view of poverty.In the current development situation of China,how to steadily get out of poverty and prevent returning to poverty is the top priority,and the issue of poverty vulnerability needs to be addressed urgently.Health is a prerequisite and guarantee to ensure a stable life for residents,and maintaining good health is the only way to improve working ability and thus escape from poverty.However,the data related to the establishment of card households show that the proportion of farmers who fall into poverty due to diseases every year is not only at a high level,but even on the rise.Financial health care expenditure is expected to alleviate residents’ health risks and solve the long-term poverty problem by establishing primary health care institutions,improving public health,and supplementing health insurance funds in various ways.Therefore,studying the impact of financial health expenditure on reducing poverty vulnerability has its practical significance for consolidating the achievements of poverty eradication and vigorously moving toward common prosperity.Through the data of China Household Tracking Survey,this paper finds that in recent years,the current situation of poverty vulnerability in China shows the following characteristics: 1.Social mobility is obvious,a large proportion of households will change from non-poor to poor,and the problem of poverty vulnerability is very serious.2.China’s poverty vulnerability shows a good trend of some fluctuations but overall reduction,but the urban-rural gap is still very obvious,and this gap expands with the increase of the poverty line.3.The poverty vulnerability index can indeed indicate to a certain extent the probability that a household may become poor in the future,because the proportion of households with high poverty vulnerability becoming poor in the future is much higher than that of households with low poverty vulnerability.4.Relatively speaking,the vulnerability of poor households is higher than that of non-poor households.5.Regardless of the level of per capita household income,the poverty vulnerability of households decreases when the income level increases.For households with household income above the poverty line,changes in income can cause an increase in vulnerability;however,for households with household income below the poverty line,appropriate changes in income can lead to a decrease in vulnerability.Since 2012,the total amount of financial medical and health expenditure has increased,and the proportion of financial general public budget expenditure has also increased substantially.However,in 2021,compared with 2020,this fiscal expenditure decreased slightly.Among them,the funds used for public hospitals,primary medical and health institutions,public health and subsidizing the basic medical insurance fund,which can effectively reduce the risk of family health,account for more than 70%.In this paper,a two-way fixed effect model is constructed for benchmark regression.The results show that the financial expenditure on medical and health care can significantly reduce the current poverty vulnerability of families and reduce the likelihood that families will face future poverty.In the robustness test part,this paper makes an empirical study by changing the measurement of key explanatory variables,delaying the key explanatory variables by one period,and changing the model to HLM model.The results show that the financial medical and health expenditure can significantly reduce the vulnerability of family poverty,and the result is steady.At the same time,compared with the current fiscal expenditure,the previous fiscal expenditure on health care has a greater weakening effect on the current poverty vulnerability,indicating that the current fiscal expenditure on health care invested by the government can effectively reduce the occurrence of family poverty in the future,which is in line with the policy requirements.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the negative effect of financial medical and health expenditure on poverty and vulnerability of rural families is larger and more significant than that of urban families,and the negative effect on poverty and vulnerability of families in economically backward areas is much higher than that in economically developed areas.The test results show that financial medical and health expenditure can play a role in reducing family poverty vulnerability by improving the health level of family members,increasing family wage income and reducing family medical and health expenditure.Finally,on the basis of the above analysis,this paper puts forward some policy suggestions: 1.Maintain financial investment in medical and health care;2.Improve rural medical and health level;3.Improve the situation of economically backward areas;4.Intensify the reform of medical insurance system.