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Do Social Medical Insurance Schemes Improve Children's Health in China?

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  • J. Guan
  • JdD Tena

Abstract

This study investigates the causal impact of acquiring social medical Insurance on hospital utilisation and health status for children under 16 years old in China from 2010 to 2016. We consider the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a longitudinal database which allows us to control for the effect of unobserved individual heterogeneity by means of difference-in-difference regressions combined with matching regression techniques. Our findings suggest that participating in social medical insurance schemes significantly increases children's yearly hospital use, especially for children who come from rural China. Moreover, this increase is not significantly different for people who were not previously sick. It is also found that social medical insurance schemes have no effect or even a marginally negative effect on children's health status in some cases. We discuss some potential explanations for this result.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Guan & JdD Tena, 2018. "Do Social Medical Insurance Schemes Improve Children's Health in China?," Working Paper CRENoS 201807, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    • Handle: RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201807
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    Cited by:

    1. Feiyan Yang & Li Wei, 2023. "The impact of tax-subsidized health insurance on health and out-of-pocket burden in China," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 48(1), pages 194-246, January.

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    Keywords

    China; Social Medical Insurance; Health Outcomes; difference-in-difference; propensity score matching;
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